Surfacing
by littlelindentree
Summary: "It's the strangest thing, surfacing from unconsciousness." Beth lives. (AU immediately after 5x08 "Coda", but including some vague references up to 6x02 "JSS".)
1. part I: the hospital

_Been kickin' up sparks, we're settin' flames free,_  
 _the windows are locked now, so what'll it be:_  
 _a house on fire or a rising sea?_  
\- Arcade Fire, "Windowsill"

* * *

Once, when Beth was a little girl, she swam to the bottom of the duck pond on the farm.

She leapt off the dock and forced herself down with strong kicks and cupped hands, spinning onto her back and opening her eyes to look upwards through the green water, sunlight slanting through the weeds and algae. It looked like she was inside a marble.

She remembers hearing muffled shouts, remembers the explosion of bubbles beside her as Shawn jumped in, hauling her roughly under her armpits to the surface, where Maggie stood on the dock, yelling and red-faced. She remembers Mama and Daddy running across the field, drawn by Maggie's shouts, remembers Mama holding her close, remembers everyone so angry at her, remembers the spanking and the grounding she got.

They thought she'd gone under too long and passed out. They thought she'd needed rescuing. She hadn't, but no one would listen.

Beth remembers sitting up that night in her bedroom while everyone else ate supper without her, sitting on her sore bottom and rubbing at her salt-chapped cheeks, thinking about how she'd only wanted to see what the world looked like from down there, that she was a strong swimmer and could hold her breath a long time, that she could have shot herself back up to the surface any time she wanted.

Her eyes open on a water-stained drop ceiling. Figures crowd around her, blurry pillars of white and blue with dark pits for eyes and wide gaping mouths, hands that pluck at her body.

It's the strangest thing, surfacing from unconsciousness.

"Beth, it's Dr. Edwards. Can you hear me, Beth?"

The sound is garbled, indistinct, like a poorly tuned radio in another room. Like someone speaking to her through a long cardboard tube.

She opens her eyes again, tries to speak, but can't. Something about it won't work. She moves her lips, or commands them to move, but they don't. There's something in the way, between her teeth, down her throat. She frowns, moans, tries to touch her face but can't do that either.

"It's all right, take it easy. You're okay. You're safe. You're in the hospital."

 _No. Not that. Anything but that._

The figures around the bed shift back and forth, watching her. They remind her of a horror movie Shawn made her watch, once, about alien abduction. She shuts her eyes again.

" - fine, sedate her for now, keep her calm. She needs to rest before we can further assess the damage - "

Beth tries to move, tries to sit up, but her body feels so heavy, so impossibly heavy, like she's being weighed down, like she's being pulled back under.

It's good. It's okay.

She liked it there, at the bottom of the duck pond, in that quiet, green marble world. She doesn't care if she never comes back up.

* * *

Beth wakes again. Things are clearer this time. More crisp and distinct. More like reality.

She swallows dryly and blinks at the peeled paint flakes that have been swept carelessly against the grungy baseboard across from the bed. The room is lit by soft evening light, and beyond the door there are voices talking, gurney wheels creaking, doors opening and closing.

She blinks, shifts, finds she can move her arms. Her muscles are weak and they ache with the effort, but she can.

A throat is cleared, and Beth becomes aware of another person in the room. She turns her head to see him standing at the foot of the bed.

Dr. Edwards.

"Ugh," she croaks, glaring at him. "What happened?"

He just stares at her for a moment, that measuring gaze, sad and resigned and cowardly as ever.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asks her.

Beth frowns, trying to recall. It's a fog. She remembers the hospital, of course, knows where she is. She remembers the weeks spent in servitude, and Noah, and the horrible cops. The things they made her do. Dawn's head games, and the escape attempt, and the new patients coming in. Carol.

 _Carol._

"Where - where is she?" she whispers, her voice painfully hoarse. "The woman with the concussion? She was brought in a few days ago -"

Dr. Edwards's expression flattens.

"You've been in a medically induced coma for five weeks," he says slowly. "You were shot point blank in the head. We had no way of knowing how bad the brain damage was without MRI or CT equipment, but we were able to repair your skull fracture and keep the swelling down. You were hanging on by a thread for a long time, but you hung on."

Beth blinks at him. _Hung on_ , like she had any say in it.

"Your injury was fascinating, actually," he says ruefully, rubbing at the back of his neck. "The bullet entered your forehead on an upward trajectory. It exited through the top of your skull without grazing your brain. It caused concussion and significant swelling and bleeding, of course, but that's what the coma was for. To give you time to recover."

"Well," Beth rasps, "glad to hear it was _fascinating_." The faint smile drops from Dr. Edwards's face, and he colours slightly.

"You're a lucky young woman, Beth," he says, remonstrative. "Incredibly lucky."

Beth ignores that. "How did I get shot? What happened?"

Dr. Edwards hesitates, and fury rises up inside her, choking her.

" _Tell me_ ," she hisses. "You tell me everything right the hell now, or I swear to God, I will - "

"Your people came for you," he interrupts her. "They kidnapped two officers to make a trade for you and the other woman. It went… It was fine, really, but Dawn… Well. Dawn was _Dawn_."

Dr. Edwards tells her, then, about the deal, about the hallway, about Noah, about the scissors and the gun and the "redneck with a crossbow, of all things" shooting Dawn, about him carrying her away, not letting anyone else touch her.

Beth's pulse pounds loud in her ears and she can barely process his words.

 _your people came for you_

 _make a trade for you_

 _she wanted Noah, wouldn't let it go_

 _you stabbed her_

 _left you in a car in the parking lot_

 _they had to run_

 _everyone thought you were dead_

 _he carried you out_

 _cops found you, clearing the parking lot_

 _we thought you were dead_

 _everyone thought you were dead_

Beth closes her eyes. They sting sharply and she feels faint, nauseated. Her body is trembling.

 _I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl._

"Stop," she says, holding up a shaking hand. "Please stop."

Dr. Edwards falls silent. He regards her for a long moment before clearing his throat again. It's a nervous tic, and abruptly, Beth loathes it with an intensity that shakes her.

"You should rest," he says. He turns to go, but he pauses at the door and looks back at her. "You really are very lucky, Beth," he says, his eyes on hers. They drift above her sightline to stare at her forehead. He watches her a moment longer, then turns and leaves, shutting the door with a soft click.

Beth leans back against the stiff pillow and closes her eyes, listens to the roaring of blood in her ears.

 _everyone thought you were dead_

 _they left you in a car_

 _they left you_

* * *

Beth sleeps.

Outside, it rains. It pours in great sheets that slap against the window of her room, and it floods the streets of downtown Atlanta, sending corpses and debris floating past empty office buildings and restaurants.

Beth wonders if it would have been a record-breaking rain, if records were kept anymore. If there was anyone left to take the time to measure it.

She rests on her side, facing the window, watching the sun rise in the mornings and set in the evenings, burnishing the sky every shade of red and purple imaginable. One morning a few days after she wakes, she sees a flock of white birds against the lilac sky. She can't tell from this distance what they are, can only see the light reflecting off their bright wings as they soar together as one.

It's so beautiful it makes her heart ache.

She wishes she had someone to show it to, or a diary to tell about it.

Beth remembers one afternoon when she and Daryl were together. They'd happened upon a small pond, still and green, rimmed with bull rushes and peppered with lily pads. In the centre had stood a white crane balancing on one long, impossibly slim leg, its pointed beak tucked against its chest.

Daryl has raised his bow, but Beth had stilled him with a hand on his forearm. To her surprise, then and now, he lowered the bow with a tight exhale. They watched the bird for several minutes in breathless silence, then Daryl touched two fingers to her elbow, and they'd slipped back into the woods.

 _He carried you out._

Beth falls asleep gasping into her tear-soaked pillow, chest tight with grief and bewildered fear.

She wants to go home.

But there's no such place. Not anymore. Not for a very long time, now.

* * *

It's a week before she can sit up and eat on her own without assistance. It's one more before she can stand, and another before she can get to the bathroom without someone walking beside her.

Eight weeks. It's been eight weeks since the shooting she still can't - and probably won't ever - remember.

The first time Beth gets herself to the bathroom unaided, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink.

When the nurses and wards had helped her before, she hadn't even noticed the mirror. Or it was blocked from her sight. She sees why, now.

Beth stares at her reflection. It's her face. But it's also not. Not at all.

The stitches have been removed from the wound on her cheekbone. It's a scar now, still fresh and pink. She has the remnants of two black eyes, the bruised skin around her eyes faded to yellowish green. The stitches have been removed from the other cut on her forehead, too.

The rest of her head she can barely stand to look at. But she does.

The entry wound in her forehead is clean, tidy. It's healed well, Beth supposes, for a bullet wound. It's small and puckered, no bigger than a dime, and Beth wonders if maybe bangs would cover it. Her eyes shift up to the blonde duckling fuzz further up, and a lump forms in her throat.

They'd shaved her head. It had to be done. She understands. The exit wound at the top of her head had left a mess that had to be cleaned, mended, stapled shut. The staples are gone, now, but the ridge of scarring remains where her skin knit itself back together over her fractured skull. She reaches a trembling hand up to touch it, feels the rasp of short hair over bumpy flesh, an indentation where once there was only smooth bone, and she snatches her hand away.

Her dad had always cautioned her and Maggie against vanity, growing up. Told them it was the mark of a shallow character, that it indicated pride. But Beth has always loved her hair. Loved braiding it, winding it around and between her fingers, brushing the ends against her lips like a paintbrush while she wrote in her diary. She loved the long wavy cornsilk of it, just like Mama's.

Now it's gone and what's left behind looks strange and wrong. If she'd decided herself to cut her hair off, that would have been different. But this feels like another gut-wrenching assault, another thing decided for her, stolen from her.

She grips the sink, squeezes her eyes shut as a wave of nausea rolls through her. It's too much. It's just too much.

 _I'm lucky_ , Beth thinks sternly. _I'm so incredibly lucky._

Beth whispers it aloud to herself once, twice, and she starts to sob. She sobs and sobs, every fragile, healing wound pulsing with the force of her grief as it erupts out of her in noisy cries.

The mirror's dingy glass shatters under her knuckles. She sees a splash of bright red on the white porcelain sink, but she feels nothing at all except her throat aching as she sobs.

A nurse comes, and another, and they're holding her tight, and one of them slides a needle into her IV, and she tries to whisper her thanks but nothing comes out except more ragged sobs.

 _I'm so lucky_ , she thinks, as she sinks backwards into darkness.

 _I'm so fucking lucky._

* * *

The sun comes up the following morning, and with it, Beth rises.

She's used to early mornings, having grown up on a farm. Sleeping late had been a foreign concept to the Greenes; so many things cry out for attention on a farm that sleeping in was never an option offered to her. Everyone'd had jobs to do.

For the first time in her entire life, Beth doesn't have a job to do.

She sits in the windowsill in her room and thinks about all those nights at the prison when she'd be awake until daybreak walking Judith up and down the cellblock while the baby fussed. Beth humming as softly as she could so she wouldn't wake their sleeping family, wouldn't disturb the tremulous peace that fell over the prison at night.

She remembers Daryl in his perch, awake as often as she was, sitting up whittling bolts for his crossbow in the moonlight. She'd look up at him as she passed and he'd nod, and neither of them would speak. She remembers wondering if he ever slept - only finding out later that he really almost didn't.

Beth thinks about the way Judith's soft, sweet-smelling little head felt pressed against her cheek, and the way her eyes would light up and she'd reach chubby hands out whenever she saw Beth coming to take her from Rick. She can't think about what came later, what must have befallen the little girl. She just can't.

Beth needs something to do. She needs something to _be_.

She's sure that she must once have wanted to do things and be things, before the world fell apart. She used to dream of the future. She used to lie in the pasture and stare up at the sky and make grand plans.

It's difficult to remember now what those plans were. And whatever they were, it's likely they have no place in this world.

But she has to find something. She has to _do_ something.

She has to try.

* * *

Officer Shepherd is in charge now.

"Things are different," she tells Beth, sounding certain that she has found the way for this place to be right. She smiles confidently, tells Beth of her plans for Grady, of the part it will play in the rebuilding of the world.

Beth knows better than to believe in any of it.

But Officer Shepherd seems fair and kind, at least, no head games or random eruptions of violence. There's none of that now. Or at least, there's none of that _yet_.  
Beth isn't interested in seeing how it all plays out.

"Where did they go?" Beth asks her. "The people who came for me - did they say where they were going?"

"They said they were headed east out of the city if anyone wanted to go with them," Shepherd replies. "Something about heading to Virginia, some place with walls? Walkers attacked the fence around the hospital as they were leaving, so they left in a big hurry." She laughs, shakes her head. "They're kidding themselves. There's no place safer than Grady. It's the best place to be, considering."

Beth doesn't know what to say to that, so she just stares at Shepherd until the other woman's face colours and her eyes drop, and Shepherd mumbles some excuse and leaves.

Beth struggles to fall asleep that night. She stares at the water-stained ceiling and worries her bottom lip between her teeth until it's chapped and raw.

They left this place. They made it that far. They might have made it out of the city. They might be somewhere out there, alive and together, or apart, but out there. Somewhere. It's possible.

Until Beth sees their bodies with her own eyes, she has to believe that it's possible.

* * *

Beth tries to remember. She tries so hard.

She wanders the hallways, pulling her IV pole beside her. She drags her fingers along the dingy walls, peers through darkened windows into rooms filled with unused wheelchairs and crutches, covered in dust and cobwebs in the gloom.

The memories must be there. After all, things happened to her. She did things. She lived. Her family came here, came for her. She saw them, spoke to them, touched them. It was real.

But it's all gone, and she can't seem to get it back.

Dr. Edwards explains that memory is like a recorded tape, that it's possible for the recording to be interrupted and deleted, that it's likely she'll never remember the day she was shot. That it's something she should try to accept.

It's hard. She wants to understand what happened, but how can she understand if she doesn't remember it?

She pushes into the corners of her mind, tries to pull the memories out by force. Tries to picture what's been explained to her, and she can, but it's not the same. Imagining what she's been told is not the same as remembering it happening.

It's not the same as knowing exactly what she felt when she stabbed a pair of scissors into Dawn's shoulder.

The older memories are more important, of course. Home. The farm. The first time she rode her bike to the end of their winding red-dirt road. Holding Daddy's thermos of hot coffee on her lap when he'd taken her out in the truck on vet calls before sunrise. The first time she'd held a newborn foal in her lap. The first time a horse had thrown her into a fence. The first real screaming fight she had with Maggie. The time she'd tried to pierce her bellybutton with a safety pin and Mama'd cried and cried because _I brought you into this world so perfect, sweetheart, why would you do a thing like this?_

All of it she still remembers, still carries with her.

The turn. The prison. The Governor. The sword and her dad on his knees. The woods. The stillhouse. Burning it down and running into the night with Daryl by her side.  
Grady's changed her, but she doesn't need to remember everything. It's probably best that she doesn't. It's the memories of the life she lived before Grady that matter, that are essential. That's who she is, still, even if she's the only one who knows it.

As for the things she's done here, she'll just have to put them away.

Maybe it's a blessing, not remembering. Maybe all of it is a strange, backwards blessing. If the angle of Dawn's gun had been even a degree lower, she would have been killed instantly. If they hadn't put her body in that car, she would have been torn apart by walkers, gutted and devoured..

She's lucky. For the first time since waking up from the coma, she feels it, believes it. She doesn't feel gratitude or humility. She doesn't want to rush out and thank the people who once held her captive for saving her life. It's simply a fact - she's been impossibly lucky.

She's not going to let it go to waste.

* * *

Beth gets better. It takes three more months, but she does.

During that time she finds that things have changed dramatically at Grady. Officer Shepherd is as good as her word. The "incident," as everyone refers to the shooting, seems to have caused a shift. The officers don't strut around barking abuse at the wards with impunity. There are no more rapes. There are no more invisible ledgers of debt and repayment. No more people brought in on gurneys with injuries suspiciously similar to what Beth'd had when she woke up at Grady.

Beth's cast comes off. Her wounds heal. Her IV is removed. She puts on weight, her muscles growing strong again. Soon she is walking up and down the hallways of the hospital, shoulders back and chin held high, no mousey tip-toeing past doorways for her anymore. She starts jogging the hallways in the mornings, sneaking into the officers' gym to use their weights. She takes extra portions at every meal, eating to her satisfaction for the first time since the prison fell. She doesn't ask for any of it. She just takes what she needs.

If anyone notices, or cares, they don't say a word.

Beth gets migraines. They inflict pain like nothing she's ever experienced, wrapping her head in a vice and splitting it open like an overripe watermelon. The fluorescent lights are like needles in her eyes, and the pain gets so bad that she throws up until she's exhausted, wrung out like a wet rag, collapsed on the bathroom floor, her gasps echoing painfully off the tile.

She doesn't say a word about it to anyone.

After all, she's strong. No one would have guessed it possible, but she survived. And she's decided that she doesn't want to stay in this place that stinks of watered-down bleach, of the rot that seeps up through the vents, of futility.

She almost died, but she didn't. She made it.

Beth knows that someday, something will get her. It will. But then, that's always been true, for everyone. Nothing about that has changed, walkers or no walkers.

Someday she will die. But today, she's alive. And as long as she's alive, she can still do something. She can still try. There's a chance that she can find them. They might be alive, too, some of them, and if they are, they're out there somewhere.

There's a chance.

There's hope.

Still.

* * *

"You can't keep me here," Beth says one afternoon as she sits on the edge of her bed while Dr. Edwards shines his penlight in her eyes, monitoring her for signs of brain damage. He spares her a glance, but doesn't reply, looking down.

"You _can't_." Her voice shakes, but she ducks her head to meet his eyes, forces him to look at her. "Not anymore. I'm leavin', and I'm gonna find my family, and _you can't keep me here_."

"All right," Dr. Edwards says then, holding his hands up in a placating gesture as though she's pointing a gun at him. He slips the penlight back into the breast pocket of his dingy white coat. "We're just trying to help you. You've been through an incredible amount of trauma. It's a miracle you survived that gunshot. You need rest, rehab -"

"Can I walk?" Beth interrupts him.

Dr. Edwards blinks at her. "Well, yes, you can, obviously, but -"

"Can I run?"

"Yes."

"Then get out of my goddamn way."

He just stares at her for a moment, and then he sighs, removing his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "It's very foolish of you, you know, to throw this kind of - of _gift_ away, to just walk out there into that - that _nightmare_ , to -"

"Out there isn't the nightmare," Beth interrupts him. "I spent a hell of a lot longer out there than you ever did, and believe me - out there is nothin' compared to this place. I'd rather deal with walkers than this. Now are you gonna let me go or not?"

"I can't stop you," he says. "We won't stop you."

Beth hops off the bed right in front of him, getting into his space for long enough that he takes a nervous step backwards. She eyes him, looks him up and down, sees the cowed expression on his face.

"I'm not throwing this gift away," she says. "I'm grabbing onto it with both hands."

She brushes past him and walks out of the room.

* * *

It's easy. All Beth has to do is tell the wards what she wants and she gets it. A car, a rifle and a handgun, ammo, food and water, jerry cans full of precious gas for the car. A little spiral-bound notebook and three pens. Bandages and antiseptic solution. They provide all of it to her in wide-eyed silence.

They're terrified of her, she realises.

She's not exactly sure how to feel about that.

Beth asks Officer Shepherd for a road map of Atlanta and its hinterland. She's never driven in the city before (she's never driven before, period, aside from Daddy's truck on the farm, but no one needs to know that) and she has to make some kind of plan for where she wants to go.

After spending days grilling every person in the hospital willing to talk to her about the day she was shot, and after examining the map she's given so many times that it's nearly burnt into the insides of her eyelids, Beth decides that they must have planned to accompany Noah home to Virginia.

She traces the route on the map, figures out the distance. It's only a little over 500 miles. Beth chews her bottom lip as her fingertip passes through the Carolinas, up to Virginia. Doubt begins to nip at the borders of her plan.

What if there was nothing in Richmond when they arrived? What if they moved on? What if there's no trace of them left there for her to follow?

What if they never went that way at all?

But it doesn't matter, Beth realises. She can't count on anybody for anything. They may be in Richmond when she arrives. They may be gone like squash vines in winter.

They may all be dead.

But that doesn't change a thing about her plan. It doesn't. She knows in her gut that there's no other way for her but to leave this place and follow them. Come what will. That's her row to hoe.

Beth gets her clothing back, but all of it is bloodstained, and it was filthy to begin with, anyway. She scrounges through the cache of personal items the officers and wards have collected from patients. She finds new jeans, a denim jacket, a long-sleeved t-shirt, warm socks. It's all dirty and ill-fitting and smells of stale sweat, but they're the first new clothes she's had in months, so she hardly cares.

Her knife is missing, and no one seems to know where it went. Shepherd has a couple of officers search the hospital for it, but it's nowhere to be found. It's a shame, but there's nothing for it. Beth just counts it among the things lost along the way.

On the last night before she plans to leave, Beth steals a half-empty bottle of whiskey from Shepherd's office and drinks it on the roof of the hospital. The stars shine down on her, rich and bright in the cloudless velvet sky.

She burns her torn, bloodstained jeans and the yellow golf shirt and her grey cardigan in a little heap, accelerated by several splashes of whiskey and a whole book of matches. She throws her dingy gown and scrubs on last, watches the material catch and incinerate in seconds, burning away to wisps of ash, to nothing.

Beth finishes the bottle and whips it as hard as she can into the sky, over the edge, listens as it lands with a satisfying shatter somewhere below.

She thrusts both hands up into the air, middle fingers raised, as she spins in silly drunken circles. She sings as loud as she can, until her throat is hoarse and hurting. Beth laughs, and she cries, and her heart feels like it will burst from joy at the change that is coming.

* * *

The next morning, Beth packs all of her supplies into a navy blue canvas backpack with _Samantha T._ written on the back in black felt pen. She pulls her boots on, buttons her jacket, runs her fingers through her short, wavy hair, and walks out of her hospital room for the last time.

Dr. Edwards is waiting in the hallway outside, leaning against the far wall. He stands up straight when she emerges from the room, and they stand there staring at each other for a moment.

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

"Good enough," Beth replies carefully.

"Any headaches? Blurred vision?"

"No," Beth lies, shaking her head. "I'm fine."

Dr. Edwards nods, looks down, and Beth seizes her opportunity.

"Okay, well - goodbye," she says, heading for the stairwell.

"Beth," he says. She stops, turns to look at him. He's looking at her expectantly.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Dr. Edwards asks, sounding incredulous. Beth looks at him, _really_ looks at him, and sees no trace of irony there. He truly doesn't understand her lack of gratitude, her determination to leave. Even after everything, he'd still rather stay.

"Thank you," Beth says, then, and she means it. "Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for doing your job."

His face falls, and he blinks at her a moment longer before turning abruptly away and disappearing down the corridor.

Officer Shepherd walks her down to the gates.

"You sure about this?" she asks, handing a set of keys to Beth when they reach the vehicle they've decided to spare her. To her delight, it's an old blue Chevy truck that reminds her of Otis's. The extra jerry cans of fuel are strapped down with bungee cords in the bed. "You can stay, you know. It's not like it was before, and people here respect you. You could really do something here."

"They're scared of me," Beth replies wryly, shrugging. "I don't think that's the same thing as respect. Anyway, I don't know how much time I have, and I don't know what I want to do with it, but I know for damn sure it ain't this."

Officer Shepherd nods, and lets it go. Beth looks over the other woman's shoulder and sees it. The grey Cutlass from which they'd pulled her unconscious body. Shepherd is watching her, and she follows her gaze. She looks back at Beth.

"They didn't want you to get eaten by biters. They put you there to keep you safe."

"I know," Beth replies softly, thinking of them, of Daryl and the others having to make that choice, of having no time for a burial, of doing her the decency of hiding her body where it wouldn't be desecrated.

 _I don't want to be gutted._

"They _did_ keep me safe," Beth says. "They didn't really know it. But they did, after all."

"Well," Shepherd says, sticking a hand out. "Good luck."

"You too." Beth shakes her hand, gets into the truck, and tosses her backpack into the passenger seat. The truck starts with a grinding thunk, and Beth feels a moment's trepidation, knowing they've probably given her the oldest, least reliable vehicle that they could spare.

Beth puts it into gear, easing onto the clutch, just the way Dad taught her the summer she turned 13 and he let her drive the truck around the pastures dropping hay off for the cattle for the first time. The truck rolls forward and Shepherd opens the gates to let her out.

Beth presses on the gas and feels a thrill of adrenaline jolt down her spine.

 _I'm leaving_ , she thinks. _I'm finally leaving._

She drives away, and although she wonders briefly whether Dr. Edwards climbed all those stairs to stand on the roof and watch her leave, she doesn't spare so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.

She's gone.


	2. part II: the road

_It's a mad mission, under difficult conditions;_  
 _not everybody makes it to the loving cup._  
 _It's a mad mission, but I got the ambition;_  
 _mad, mad mission, sign me up._  
\- Patty Griffin, "Mad Mission"

* * *

Beth drives.

The devastated city looks different up close. What she'd seen from the roof of Grady prepared her somewhat for the extent of the damage, but not for the intimate horrors she finds along the freeway.

She keeps her eyes straight ahead on the road until she can't. Then, she looks until she can't.

It's an exhausting drive, finding her way out of the city, navigating collapsed bridges and pile-ups of cars and trucks. She has to backtrack and reroute herself twice, until she decides that the freeways are a no-go and instead makes her way to the edge of the city via winding side streets and suburban parkways.

Beth drives past houses and schools and football fields, churches and outlet malls and gas stations. Everything is crumbling, burnt out and abandoned. Everything is green, mossy and mouldy, slowly being swallowed by the encroaching woods. She passes hundreds of billboards that dot the landscape, their ads peeling and waving in the breeze like tattered flags.

There are corpses everywhere.

Most are old, from the early days, picked clean and bleached dry by the sun. But they still wear clothes, they're still buckled safely in the seats of their cars, they still face forward. They still have hair clinging to their skulls, still have fillings in the teeth exposed by their gaping mouths.

Beth makes it as far as the South Carolina border before she finally has to stop. She stands next to the truck and vomits on the cracked pavement, heaving bile and saliva until it hurts to swallow. She sits down in the shade of the truck, her back against the front driver's side tire.

In a way, she's glad the horror can still disgust her, devastate her. She's glad it hasn't yet become commonplace. Acceptable. She knows now what happens to a person when it becomes acceptable.

Eventually she stands, wiping sweat from her brow. The sun is sinking into the horizon, so she starts the truck back up to find a place to camp for the night. She chooses a sheltered spot on the banks of the Savannah River, off a side road leading to a rest stop.

She sits in the dark cab of the truck with her booted feet up on the passenger seat, eating dry ramen noodles from their plastic envelope, licking the fake shrimp flavour off her fingers. She hums "Coat of Many Colors" to herself as loud as she dares, which isn't very. The stars and moon hide behind a cloudy sky, and it's utterly dark.

She sleeps with her gun in her hand.

* * *

In the morning, the truck won't start.

Beth hammers away at the ignition, listening to the engine grind and choke, before shrieking in frustration and tossing the keys across the cab. She sits in the truck for nearly an hour, watching the sun come up and the mist rise off the river. When she tries the ignition again, the engine doesn't even respond. All she hears is the click of the battery.

Beth takes her pack and slings the rifle over her shoulder, sticks the handgun in its holster. She stands there, staring at the dead truck, and sighs.

"Well, truck," she says, placing the keys on the hood and giving the vehicle a conciliatory pat, "you tried."

Beth consults her map for what must be the hundredth time before folding it into a palm-sized square and tucking it into her bra.

She crosses the bridge spanning the Savannah River, and starts to walk into South Carolina.

A flock of gulls rises from the river and takes to the sky, their white wings bright in the morning sun.

* * *

" _Across the field where the crick turns back by the ol' stone road, I'm gonna take you to a special place that nobody knows, baby get ready, oooooooh!_ "

Beth sings.

She sings every song she can remember. She sings entire albums from start to finish. She sings her favourite songs over and over and over.

There's no one to tell her to quiet down. No one to tell her enough's enough. No one to say _keep singin'_. But she does. It's what she wants, the sound of her own strong, clear voice rising out of her to hang bright in the air.

She walks through the woods, close enough to the highway to keep it in sight as her route marker, but far enough back that if anyone comes along, it will be easy to conceal herself among the trees.

Not that anyone's come by. She hasn't seen a living soul since she left Grady, and that was two and a half weeks ago.

" _Rock me mama like the wind and the rain, rock me mama like a southbound train, heyyyyyy, mama rock me!_ "

When she happens upon a little blue bungalow set back on several acres, an old Chevette up on cinderblocks in the yard, she takes the time to check it for supplies. There are two walkers inside the house, and she manages to take them out with only one bullet each from her handgun. She doesn't find much that's useful aside from a few cans of peas and stewed tomatoes. Instead, it's something completely useless that captures her attention in the dingy living room off the kitchen.

Sitting atop the old tube TV is a lime green plastic ashtray in the shape of a bikini top.

Beth lets out a surprised giggle at the sight of the ugly thing. She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle it, but she can't - she doubles over, hands on her knees, and laughs until she cries, until her stomach aches and her head throbs.

She stays there that night, after securing the entrance with chairs and cinderblocks. She eats the peas and the tomatoes for dinner, and stretches out on the moth-eaten brown and orange velour couch to sleep.

Her last thought before she falls asleep is that she can't wait to tell Daryl about the ashtray.

In the morning, she stands in the yard next to the rusty Chevette and watches flames engulf the house. If the universe is going to send her a sign, she's more than happy to send one back.

Beth walks down the long gravel driveway, back to the highway, and she sings.

" _My travelling companions are ghosts and empty sockets, I'm lookin' at ghosts and empties, but I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland!_ "

* * *

When Beth finally does encounter another person, she wishes she hadn't.

Walking through the woods one afternoon, she hears voices ahead, up by the highway. She pauses, listening carefully. The words themselves are indistinct, but Beth's sure she hears more than two voices. None of them are raised, though, so she proceeds carefully, sticking to the woods.

She edges closer to the voices, soon finding the source. She crouches behind a large oak tree, twenty or so yards away from the small group of people gathered in the road. A woman and a man stand next to a blue SUV, close together, apprehensive. In her arms, the woman holds a squirming toddler.

Beth leans forward just enough to see the other people standing near them. There are three of them; men, she thinks, although it's difficult to tell. They're filthy, dressed in clothes little better than rags. Beth would feel empathy for them, except there is something in the way they stand facing the couple that unsettles Beth. A twinge in her stomach that stays her hand, keeps her from calling out to any of them in greeting, keeps her crouched behind the tree.

There's something not right about these people. Something off. Something dangerous.

The man by the SUV is speaking, holding something out with one hand to the others, blocking the woman's body with his own.

One of the others turns to speak to his companions, and Beth can see there's some kind of strange mark on his forehead. It could be dirt, but Beth doesn't think so. It looks almost like a brand, or a scar.

Then, without warning, one of the men in rags pulls a hatchet from his belt. He lifts his arm, swings it through the air, and buries the hatchet in the woman's collarbone.

Beth bites her fist to stifle the shocked shout that threatens to leap from her throat. Pulling herself back behind the cover of the tree, she squeezes her eyes shut and wraps her arms around her knees, trying to make herself as small as she can. But she can't drown out the sound of the man's grunts, of the hatchet striking wet crunching bone over and over and over, of fists meeting flesh, of the toddler's shrill screams abruptly silenced.

 _Run_ , she thinks wildly, her heart pounding, _I have to run._

Beth stumbles to her feet and she runs for the deeper cover of the trees.

Beth runs without pausing, without looking back. She runs until her awareness has narrowed to the pounding of her boots on the ground, the hammering of her heart.

She runs until she is soaked in sweat, runs until her thighs feel like they are made of concrete, until they stiffen and she stumbles, falling against the trunk of a tall tree.

Panting, she leans on it for a moment, gripping the solid bark beneath her fingers.

A twig snaps nearby, and she bolts.

She keeps running.

* * *

It gets harder to sleep. Even when she finds small, secure hiding spots at night. Even when she finds a hunter's blind high up in a chestnut tree. Even when she finds places with deadbolts and boarded-up windows.

It simply isn't safe to sleep on her own.

She dozes in short spurts, her rest fitful and painted red by ugly dreams. Lack of sleep saps her energy. Fear makes her dull and slow, even as she grows more anxious, even as she stares up at the bright stars at night and strains to hear twigs snapping in the woods around her.

Beth feels tight all over, like a tuned piano wire.

The hypervigilance costs her dearly - a dizzying migraine drives her to a one-room hunting cabin just north of Falls Lake that's small and sturdy, easy to secure. She sets snares in the woods and hides inside the dim, gloomy cabin, her jacket covering her head to block out even the faintest light.

She finds a small rabbit in the snare the next morning and she skins it on the porch, blood and tufts of downy fur clinging to her hands. She rubs dry grass between her palms to clean them as the rabbit roasts over the flames of the fire she hardly dares to build in the yard.

The sight of the smoke floating up into the sky frightens her. She sees what others might - a beacon indicating there's a person camped here. She stamps out the flames as soon as she can. She devours the meat quickly, spurred on by hunger and fear, and throws the carcass into a nearby ravine.

She tries to stay the night in the cabin but the fear that someone has seen the smoke becomes too great, panic sounding like alarm bells in her head. She leaves when the moon is high and bright in the sky.

The dark stillness of the woods soothes her, and she keeps walking.

* * *

Beth thinks she might be disappearing. At times she wonders if she already has.

She hasn't seen another person since those ragged, vicious men on the highway. She finds evidence of people, plenty of it, scattered clothes and old campfire pits and tattered tents and empty cans of food. She tracks footprints in the dirt, trying to discern the story of what happened, wondering what Daryl would see there that she's missed.

But she doesn't see anyone living. No one cruel or kind. No groups or lone travellers. Just her, the highway, the birds in the trees, and the occasional stumbling walker.

No one to notice or care if she should die.

Beth thinks about that a lot. Not the precise mechanism of her death, be it walkers or people or disease or injury or a blood clot choking off her fragile brain. No, she simply pictures her own absence, the empty space she'd leave behind. Her departure from this world going unnoticed, like fading into nothing.

After all, if everyone who once knew her believes she's dead, and if they themselves are dead, then it's possible she's already been forgotten, wiped from the memory of the world.

"I'm here," she says one day, to the indifferent green woods. "I still exist."

Beth scavenges an old car by the side of the road, picking through the trash in the backseat. That's when she sees something written in the grime on the rear window. Someone's initials, she supposes, drawn in the dust by a finger: _J S S_

Before she leaves the car to its slow, rusting consumption by the forest, Beth adds something of her own to the dirty window.

 _BETH GREENE WAS HERE_

* * *

She arrives on the outskirts of Richmond.

Following Noah's descriptions and everything Officer Shepherd told her, she finds the place with the walls. It's there. The walls still stand.

But everyone's gone. There's no one left living in this place.

Beth stands in the middle of the street, looking from house to house for some sign. Anything. Some indication that her family came through here, some inkling of where they went.

There's nothing. Nothing but a lone walker up the block, dragging one broken leg behind it as it lurches along.

Eventually Beth starts moving from house to house on one cul-de-sac, looking for supplies, trying to keep her rising panic from overwhelming her. She opens drawers and cupboards and ignores the way her chest has tightened, her breaths shortening to anxious little inhalations. She moves automatically, shoving tins of sardines and packets of take-out ketchup into her backpack.

She doesn't look at any of the dozens of framed pictures that decorate the walls, or go into any of the bedrooms. She can't stand to.

She tries to leave the last house on the cul-de-sac, and she finds she cannot. It's as though she's paralyzed, one hand resting on the brass doorknob of the thick wooden front door. She stares through the diamond-shaped window at the empty street, at the apple tree in the yard. She orders herself to open the door and walk through it, but her body's become disobedient, ignoring her commands completely.

It's strange; there's no immediate danger, but whole body is telling her that there is. Everything in her urges her to run, and yet she cannot make herself move. She trembles, her hands shaking.

Beth's breaths shorten and she starts to sweat, her shirt clinging to her skin beneath her jacket. Her stomach churns and her head throbs; it feels like she's going to throw up and shit herself all at once. She's more frightened than she's ever been in her life, and at once she's convinced she must be dying.

When she wakes, she has no idea how much time has passed. She has no recollection of lying down on the sisal welcome mat, of curling into a tight ball, her back pressed to the door. Her hands are clenched in fists beneath her chin, and it takes several minutes before her fingers will loosen. Her whole body's drenched with sweat, her face wet with tears, and she sits up slowly, leaning back against the door.

Beth stares down the hallway, into the bright kitchen at the back of the house. She watches the sunlight move across the tile floor, watches the dust motes drift through the slanting shafts of afternoon light.

She wonders if there's any point in getting up at all.

Eventually she does, though, sometime later. She stands. Her legs wobble and ache. She doesn't make herself find a reason to stand, she just does it. She pulls her backpack and her rifle on, makes sure her handgun is secure in its holster.

She leaves the house, closes the door behind her.

The reason for the community's abandonment becomes clear when she walks down the sidewalk, out of the cul-de-sac and onto the main road. Down the street she sees a sizeable herd - at least a few dozen walkers - shuffling aimlessly around a small playground.

The walkers bump against each other, snarling distractedly, jerking their rotting bodies into each other as they wait for a fresh source of food to appear.

Beth stares at them, wondering if this herd devoured her family. Wondering if they're now part of it.

Something powerful pulses through her, makes her head throb. Her chest is tight with it, and suddenly she wants to scream, to rage, to thrash violently against the brutal unfairness, against the ugliness. She's felt it before, that horrible day the Governor attacked, when she stood and watched as the man took Michonne's sword to her father's neck. She thinks she's felt it other times, but the memories don't come to her.

Those memories are gone, of course, along with everything else.

Without pausing to consider the wisdom of her actions, Beth hoists the rifle into her arms, aims, and fires at the herd, pelting them with bullets. The power of the weapon shoves her backwards, knocks her aim off. She manages a few headshots but most of the ammo gets buried in the walkers' rotting bodies as they turn towards her, jaws snapping and arms reaching, stumbling forward.

The barrel clicks, empty, and Beth swings the rifle back over her shoulders. She turns, then, and runs in the opposite direction of the herd. These walkers are fresh and move relatively quickly, and Beth curses herself for losing her temper. _Stupid_. She should have just walked away.

There's no time to secure something as large and penetrable as a house, so Beth looks for a car. She finds one in a driveway halfway up the block, a silvery-gold Honda with the driver's side door hanging open.

Beth dashes to the car, pausing when she sees the corpse slumped in the driver's seat. She grabs it under its armpits and pulls hard, groaning at the weight of it. It's the body of a big man, and even in its present state of decay, it's heavy. She hears the herd approaching, and panic races up her spine.

"Come on, you _bastard_ ," she curses, bracing a foot against the car door frame and pulling with every ounce of strength she can muster. The body budges, finally, tumbling out of the car and on top of her, a wave of stench hitting her like a slap to the face. Beth scrambles out from under the body, grimacing when she sees the maggots all over its back, all over the car seat.

Heedless, Beth throws her pack and the rifle into the car and climbs in. She slams the door shut behind her, clambering over the filthy seat and into the backseat. She slides down to the floor as the first walker hits the car, scraping its broken teeth against the glass, its eyes clamped on her. Others follow it, rocking the car with their bodies as they struggle to get at her.

She clutches the rifle to her chest and pulls an old beach towel on the seat over top of her, blocking out the light.

There's a lump in her throat that won't budge. She flinches each time a walker throws itself against the side of the car. They scrabble against the metal and glass, but not even the terror is enough to wash out the sorrow.

" _Hold on, hold on_ ," she whispers to herself, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to remain completely still. " _You really gotta hold on. Take my hand, I'm standing right here, and just hold on._ "

 _Just hold on._

* * *

The walkers move on. It takes hours for the herd to grow disinterested and to wander off, drawn away by noises in the woods at the edge of town. Beth stays put long after their growling and shuffling has faded. By then it's dark, so she closes her eyes and tries to sleep, but she cannot.

She stares dry-eyed at the ceiling of the car and thinks of her family, of their corpses, of their yellowed eyes and snapping mouths.

She thinks of Daryl, fighting 'til the end, imagines him defending the others. Thinks of the night they spent in the trunk of that car, walkers all around them, thunder crashing overhead. How she was so frightened, so frantic, yet all it took to keep her from losing her mind was to glance over and see how still and steady he was as he held his crossbow, ready to defend them both.

Beth misses him. She misses him so badly she has to shove the thought of him away from her. It's too much.

Eventually the morning dawns, grey and cool, and Beth sits up, pushing the ratty old beach towel off her. Her mouth is dry and her head throbs. She needs to find water.

Beth leans into the front seat, trying to avoid the maggots still writhing on the rotting upholstery, and tries the keys in the ignition. The only response is the faint ticking of the engine trying to start on a dead battery. She sighs. A small plastic potted flower is affixed to the dashboard, its petals bobbing slowly up and down in a cartoonish dance, powered by a tiny solar panel on its base. Beth reaches forward and peels it off the dashboard, the adhesive patch on its bottom giving way easily. She tucks it inside her backpack, next to her dwindling supply of ammo.

Shouldering her pack and her rifle, she leaves the car. It's brisk outside, mist still hanging in the distance in every direction. Beth walks down the street until she sees a rain barrel tucked against the shady side of a brown bungalow. She goes to it, and is pleased to find that the screen on top is intact; the water should be relatively clean. She pops the screen off and leans over the barrel, looking at the crystal-clear reflection of herself she sees staring back at her.

Her face is filthy. Her wounds and bruises have healed. Her hair's growing back in soft waves, shaggy around her ears, a darker blond than before. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes dark and serious.

But she's there, shimmering on the surface of the water. She's still alive.

She dips her water bottle down into the dark barrel, fills it, and drinks.

Beth downs two full bottles standing there, and fills it once more before she leaves. She walks down the quiet, tree-lined suburban street, no sign of the herd. She keeps walking until she passes through a gateway in the walls, sidestepping the dried blood that paints the pavement.

She walks a while longer, the houses fewer and farther between as she goes, until she approaches a meadow beyond an old rail fence. She ducks behind some bushes there to relieve herself, the water having run through her at a quick pace.

When she's finished, she goes and stands by the fence, staring at the meadow and the woods beyond.

She doesn't know what to do next. She has no idea where to go.

Beth looks down at her feet, swallowing the anger and the sorrow that swell suddenly inside her.

 _Why is this happening?_

 _Why didn't they stay?_

 _Why didn't they take me with them?_

 _Why do I have to do this alone?_

A sob catches in her throat, and Beth clutches her elbows, tries to hold herself. She wants to lie down. She wants to cry until her eyes burn. She wants to quit.

A bird calls nearby, a flute-like melody that fills the still dawn air with song. Beth turns her head and listens as the same call rings out again, clear and true. She stirs, her legs still stiff from spending the night on the cramped car floor, and follows the sound down the fence line.

At the edge of the woods, perched on a fencepost, is a bright bird, its feathers yellow and brown. A meadowlark, she thinks, when he opens his sharp black beak and sings again, a little dart of steam leaving his mouth in the crisp morning air. He cocks his head in her direction, his shiny bead eyes watching her warily. He shakes, ruffling his feathers out before stretching his neck long and singing a slow, sweet version of his little tune.

Then, he opens his wings and takes flight, disappearing across the field and into the woods beyond in a flicker of yellow.

Beth stands there for a long time, staring at the spot where the meadowlark perched to sing his song. Eventually she looks around her. There is nothing for her here, and she can't go back - she just can't.

She takes a shaky breath, and walks back up to the highway, and carries on towards the northeast.

* * *

Beth walks for the better part of a week before she encounters another person.

She'd happened upon a small town that was not much more than a service station, a post office, a couple of stores, and a diner at a crossroads. She's emerging from a house on one of the side streets, examining the can of crushed pineapple she found in the kitchen, when someone clears their throat.

In her surprise and rush to get at her handgun, Beth drops the can of pineapple, and it clanks noisily down the front steps.

A man stands on the other side of the chain link fence. Beth guesses he's in his 30s. He's tall, though not a very large man. Short, curly brown hair, blue eyes. The strange thing about him, though, is that his clothes and his face are clean, as though he's washed them recently.

Beth squares her feet on the creaky porch, clutches the handgun in both hands, and points it right at his chest.

"Hello," the man says. He raises his hands. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a friend."

The man has a kind face, and Beth wants to trust it.

She can't. But she wants to.

"It's all right," he says, keeping his hands raised. "I get it, I'd be cautious too. You'd be crazy not to. It makes sense. But I don't mean you any harm. Honest. I only want to tell you that there's a place - a community - that's safe. I can show you pictures."

"Pictures?" Beth asks, suspicious. Her hand tightens on the grip of the handgun. "How do you have pictures?"

"We found a camera a while back. One of the guys took photography in high school, so he set up a darkroom, developed them for us. I can show them to you. They're in my pack."

"Where?" Beth asks, half out of interest and half trying to call his bluff. Everything he's saying sounds too good to be true, and if there's one thing she's learned from the mess her life has become over the last two years, it's that the old cliche is painfully accurate.

"The pocket at the front," he replies, turning his back very slowly towards her in invitation. "Go ahead."

Beth stares down the barrel of her gun at the back of his head for a long moment, chewing her bottom lip.

 _There are still good people_ , she thinks. It's harder to believe now than it was for her back then. She'd managed to convince Daryl, somehow. Now she feels like she can't even convince herself. She weighs the decision a moment longer, watches as the man glances back over his shoulder, his expression slightly nervous.

Nervous, yes, but guileless. Kind. Open.

Lowering her weapon but keeping it grasped in her right hand, Beth walks down the steps. She crosses the small yard and comes around the fence to stand by him. She unzips the pocket, and inside is a dog-eared yellow envelope. She extracts and unfolds it, opening it to reveal several grainy black-and-white photos. The first shows a tall steel wall, reinforced by long beams. Much stronger than the deteriorating chain link and tree trunks of the prison's defences, she notes. The next photo shows a suburban street that looks like something out of an issue of _Southern Living_ , all wide white porches and clipped lawns. Beth can't help it, she scoffs.

"Is this for real?" she asks, incredulous.

"Yes," the man replies, turning back to face her. "I know - it's hard to believe. Most people feel that way when they first see it. Hard to believe anything like that could have survived. But it has."

Beth hums noncommittally and moves on to the next photo. A group of small children are playing in a grassy yard surrounded by a pristine white picket fence. There are playground toys all over, a sandbox and a slide, and to one side, almost out of frame, she sees the indistinct figure of a gawky teenage boy holding a toddler in his arms.

The boy is wearing a sheriff's hat.

Beth gasps, her pulse pounding as a surge of adrenaline jolts abruptly through her. She looks up to see the man watching her curiously, his eyebrows drawn together.

"How - who is this?" she rasps, her throat dry. She thrusts the photo at him, bending it in her tight fist.

"Why?" the man asks, his voice quiet. He's the cautious one now, eyeing her somewhat warily.

" _Who is this_?" she repeats, grabbing his sleeve. "Is this a trick? Who are you?"

"Do you know him? Do you know that boy?"

"Yes," Beth replies, nodding, wishing her voice wouldn't shake in front of this stranger, wishing that tears weren't forming in her eyes. "Yes, I know him."

The man eyes her a moment longer. "That's Carl Grimes, and his baby sister, Judith."

Beth lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and she doesn't care at all now when her tears overflow and slide down her cheeks.

They made it. They survived.

The man is scrutinizing her, his head tilted. He looks her over, his eyes lingering on her forehead.

"What's your name?" he asks, slow and careful. There's something tremulous in his look, something scared but hopeful too, and just like that, Beth isn't cautious anymore. She isn't scared. Not at all.

"My name's Beth," she replies. "Beth Greene."

"Oh my god," he says, shaking his head, astonished. "But you - they said - _Oh my god_."

"They?" Beth prompts him, grabbing his other sleeve. The gun and the photos have fallen away, she's dropped them; all she is aware of is this stranger's face, the look of disbelief there, the tears in _his_ eyes.

"Beth Greene," he repeats, giving a little bewildered laugh and smiling at her, smiling so wide that Beth knows deep in her bones that she likes this man, that he's a _good_ person, that he's a friend. "It's wonderful to meet you, Beth Greene. My name's Aaron."

"Hi, Aaron," she grins, feeling foolish, and then she's laughing too, laughing and crying all at once, trying to think of where to begin with the barrage of questions she has for him, but all they can do is stand there and grin at each other.

"I've heard so many great things about you, Beth," he says, shaking his head, "and I know a whole bunch of people who are going to be thrilled to see you. Beyond thrilled."

"Who's there?" she asks, desperate and terrified to find out.

"Maggie's there," he replies, and Beth laughs out another sob, gripping his jacket harder in her clenched fingers, "and Glenn, and Rick and Michonne, Carol and Sasha, Abraham and Rosita and Tara and Eugene, and Gabriel, too," he says. Beth is surprised to hear Carol included, and she doesn't know all the names, but she doesn't care - she knows if he's including them with the others, they must be family, too. Aaron pauses, tilting his head at her. "Daryl's there."

"Daryl's there," Beth repeats, her heart constricting painfully. She closes her eyes as more tears squeeze out and she feels like she might float right off the ground with elation. _Daryl's there, Daryl's there, Daryl's there!_ "Of course he's there. I told him he would be," she says, and Aaron huffs out a laugh, and Beth knows then that Aaron is a friend of Daryl's, too.

"What about Noah?" she asks. Aaron's expression falters.

"We lost him on a run not long after they arrived. Glenn was with him. It was… I'm sorry."

"Oh," Beth breathes, the punch of sadness taking the wind out of her sails. "I really hoped… Oh."

"I know," he says. "I wish I could tell you things aren't still incredibly dangerous, but, well." He gives a hapless, sad little shrug.

"Can you take me there?" Beth asks, then. "How far away is this place?"

"It's not far; you would have gotten to us on your own, soon enough," Aaron replies, smiling again. "I've got a car, but I'm guessing you're gonna want to go with Daryl."

"With Daryl?" Beth frowns.

"He can't be too far away, I'm sure. We're supposed to meet up soon, so -"

"Daryl's _with you_?"

"Sure," Aaron replies. "This is what we do. We go out looking for people. Anyone who's out here, looking for shelter. We're recruiters."

Beth shakes her head, astonished. Daryl Dixon, out recruiting strangers? She can hardly believe it, except that somehow she absolutely can, and the thought warms her from the inside out.

 _They may be nuts, but maybe it'll be all right._

"Come on," Aaron says, smiling. He's excited, too. "Let's not waste any time."

Aaron starts to walk back in the direction he'd come, towards the centre of the little town. They walk up the tree-lined street side-by-side, Aaron keeping his long strides slow to allow Beth to keep pace. It makes her smile; she likes him already.

"His bike's been acting up," Aaron says. "We've got a designated meeting point here for when we get separated on runs, though. We'll check for him there."

"His bike?" Beth asks. "He's got a bike?"

"Yeah!" A pleased smile steals across Aaron's face. "We had the parts and the tools but no one who knew how to put a bike together. Then we met Daryl."

Beth grins, remembering how Daryl mentioned the loss of his brother's motorcycle more than once after they were forced to leave it behind, remembering how he looked the first time she ever saw him, when he came roaring up the driveway at the farm in front of that old RV.

 _He must be so happy_ , she thinks, and her face aches from grinning.

It's surreal, walking beside this stranger, knowing that she's about to finally see Daryl. Her family. Her friend. The man she once thought she might spend the rest of her life with, however short a time that ended up being. The man who once pinned her in place with such an inscrutable look of fearful tenderness that she's still trying to figure out exactly what she was to him.

Her stomach is a riot of activity and her head throbs, and soon Aaron doesn't have to shorten his strides at all, for Beth is practically jogging in her hurry to get to their destination.

"He's going to be so excited to see you," Aaron says. "I mean, not _excited_. He's been very… Well. He hasn't said much about it, but you kinda can't miss it." Beth's tempted to ask Aaron what he means, exactly, but as they pass the diner, he continues. "Poor guy. I would have liked to prepare him, to be honest, but - "

They round the corner and his words falter. There on the sidewalk in front of the service station, crouched down beside a motorcycle, his back to them, is Daryl. The angel wings on his vest are almost as dark as the leather now, but it's him, head bent as he fiddles with something on the bike.

It's too much. It's suddenly far too much for her, seeing him there, after months of wondering, weeks of hoping against all reason, and Beth tries to say his name, but all that comes out of her is a sob.

Daryl's on his feet in an instant at the sound of it, turning around, and Aaron's shouting something to him, but Beth doesn't hear it, doesn't care, because she's running then, running to him, her boots pounding on the pavement as her legs eat up this last distance between them that still feels too great. His face is a pale shocked blur as she crashes into him, knocking him back a step when she throws her arms around his neck and smashes her face into his collarbone.

He freezes for a moment, arms at his sides, and then a sound like a choked gasp escapes him and his arms are around her and he's holding her tight, clutching the back of her head in his palm, panting for air next to her ear, lifting her right off her feet.

" _Beth_ ," he breathes.

Beth tries again to say his name, tries to say _something_ , but she can't; all she can do is weep as she grips the leather of his vest tight in her hands. Burying her face in his neck, she breathes the familiar smell of him, that sweat and leather and ground-in cigarette smoke and fresh air smell that reminds her of the funeral home, of the day he carried her through the tombstones.

"How?" he whispers, and his tone is something she's never heard before. She cannot place it, cannot name the emotions it holds inside it.

Beth shakes her head, unable to speak. She pulls back enough to look at him properly. He's aged even in the months they've been apart; he looks tired, his hair long and lank, hanging all around his face like a dark curtain. His expression is stunned, thrown, and it feels like maybe he's trembling. Like maybe they both are.

"I made it," she says.

Daryl just stares at her, his gaze drawn up to her forehead. Absently, his hand leaves the back of her head and she feels his thumb brush against the little round scar above her eyebrows, the bullet wound he watched Dawn's gun make. He inhales sharply and pulls his hand away, takes a step back from her, removes himself, and the moment is gone.

Beth senses Aaron hanging back at the periphery, allowing them as much privacy as he can, but he clears his throat then.

"We should go," he says, his tone apologetic. Beth looks over at him as he gestures up the road at several walkers milling around the service station. "Anyway, I don't think we need to find anyone else on this trip," he continues, smiling gently at Beth.

Daryl looks up and nods at Aaron. He glances back at Beth, and he's cagey, like when they were all still strangers and he would come into the farmhouse and stand there looking so uncomfortable he seemed ready to leap out the window just to get away from all of them.

"You wanna go in the car, or…?" he tips his chin in the direction of his bike.

"You," Beth replies immediately. "I wanna go with you."

Daryl squints and pulls a strange sort of face that's almost a grimace, and he nods.

"Well," Aaron says, his eyebrows raised, "see you back home."

 _Home_.

Daryl nods again, then turns away to swing his leg over his bike. "Hop on," he says, staring straight ahead, not looking at her.

Beth climbs gingerly onto the seat between Daryl and the rack that holds his crossbow, scooting forward against his back. She winds her arms around his waist, and jumps when Daryl kicks the bike to a start. She's never ridden a motorcycle before.

"Y'good?" he asks, looking over his shoulder at her.

"Peachy," she replies shakily, embarrassed by the way the bike unnerves her. The corner of Daryl's mouth quirks up, and he faces forward once more. He waves some kind of hand signal to Aaron, and Aaron returns it. They speed past the small herd of walkers by the service station and pull out onto the highway, heading north, Aaron driving along behind them.

The bike rumbles between her legs and the wind whips tears from her eyes, shrieks in her ears as she clings to Daryl's waist. He leads them down the winding road, leaning carefully with each curve. Beth feels herself start to relax, feels herself lean with him.

Beth thinks of him carrying her across that cemetery, carrying her down the hallway to their "white trash brunch," carrying her out of Grady. Now he's carrying her home. _Home_.

Beth thinks of the night she was taken, all those months ago. She remembers the glow of the tealights and the scent of grape jelly, and the way Daryl brought his chair around the table so they could sit side-by-side.

She remembers how it turned tense and odd, how he looked at her like maybe there was something he wanted her to know but couldn't say, like maybe she scared him a little.

She remembers " _Oh_."

Beth lets her head fall forward so that her cheek is pressed against the hard plane of Daryl's back, the leather there hot from the sun.

She holds him tighter, turns her head to press her nose to his back, tries to tell him without words all the things she's wanted to tell him every night since that one in the funeral home.

 _I know._

 _It's okay._

 _Me too._

Daryl's hand leaves the handlebar and finds hers against his stomach. He wraps his fingers around hers, and holds on.

* * *

The credits for the songs Beth sings are, in order:

 _Coat of Many Colors_ \- Dolly Parton  
 _Fishin' in the Dark_ \- Nitty Gritty Dirt Band  
 _Wagon Wheel_ \- Old Crow Medicine Show  
 _Graceland_ \- Paul Simon  
 _Hold On_ \- Tom Waits


	3. part III: home

_And whether he knows it or not,_  
 _I'll take my chances because they're all I've got._  
 _And whether he knows what I do,_  
 _I just can't hide what I know to be true._  
-Lisa Jaeggi, "Whether He Knows"

* * *

The walls of Alexandria are everything Aaron promised, high and sturdy.

It's late afternoon when they drive up and idle at the gate, and Beth tips her head back, squinting into the bright sun. From over the walls she can hear the sound of indistinct voices talking and laughing, and beyond, a whining metallic sound that could be a lawnmower.

There's a shout on the other side and the sound of metal grinding on metal, and the wide gate slides open, pulled by a young man Beth doesn't know.

Daryl drives the bike through the gates and parks it just inside. Aaron pulls up right behind, and he's out of the car and shouting to the young man even as the gates bang firmly shut behind them.

"Get Maggie and Glenn!" Aaron says, "get all of them!"

Beth stays on the bike, her arms still around around Daryl's waist as he kills the engine. The young man darts off and Beth turns her head to take the place in. Wide, quiet streets, a few people walking in the distance. Birds singing in the trees.

Beth looks at the back of Daryl's head, at the tips of his ears poking out from his hair. They're dark pink, and Beth doesn't think it's the wind that did that.

She's about to open her mouth, about to say _something_ to him, though she's not yet sure what, when she hears a shout and footsteps. She turns, and Glenn jogs to a halt ten feet away. Behind him is Michonne, and she can see others coming.

"Holy shit," Glenn swears, and Beth scrambles off the motorcycle right as he swoops her up in a hug that reminds her painfully of Shawn's bear hugs. She's relieved that Glenn doesn't finish his off with a noogie or a headlock. He keeps saying "holy shit" over and over, breathless and laughing.

Over his shoulder, Michonne's grinning at them, tears in her eyes, before her gaze shifts to Daryl, still sitting on the bike, and Beth sees her give him a look that is tender and kind, and soaked through with grief.

"I gotta get Maggie," Glenn mutters as he releases Beth, dashing off in the direction of the nearby houses. Beth finds herself pulled into another hug, not recognizing the boy until she pulls back and sees it's Carl, taller than her now. She hugs him again, laughing, and it's complete chaos as she's pulled from person to person, Michonne and Carol and Sasha, until she finds herself being pulled into Rick's arms. He hugs her and drops a kiss on the top of her head, and with a bewildered shake of his own, says, "I'll be goddamned."

Beth hears Maggie before she sees her. She's shouting something, and then everyone is making way, and suddenly Beth's tough big sister is right there in front of her, her face stricken. They just stare for a moment, and then Maggie's holding her tight, almost too tight, sobbing, while everyone stands in a snug circle around them.

The press of bodies makes Beth's pulse pound, her breath shorten. She can't tell if she's excited or scared anymore, and as Maggie takes her firmly by the hand, she hopes there are no tears in her eyes.

The next few hours are a blur as Beth is introduced to the others who have joined their group along the way, the ones Aaron mentioned. She's trundled off to the house Maggie and Glenn share with Tara and Rosita. There's a hot shower, and clean clothes borrowed from Tara while her dirty ones are whisked away, and the ease and normalcy of it all unnerves her.

They gather that night at Maggie and Glenn's, only their family, over plates of casserole made by Carol. They spread themselves around on every available surface in the living room, close together, like a pack of wolves in its den. Beth can tell by the sidelong looks she gets that they're curious to hear her story, but no one asks it of her outright.

Beth sits close to Maggie on the couch as they all eat, sharing stories from their day. They interject with little asides for Beth, gossipy tales about their new neighbours, explanations of the way things work in Alexandria, and stories from their time on the road, tales of train tracks and churches, tales of losing and finding, tales of mad men and cannibals, tales of wandering and running.

They have so many horrible, sad, beautiful, amazing stories.

It's a lot to process. Beth almost wants to beg off, almost wants to go crawl into the bed Maggie's made for her in a room upstairs, but she can't quite make herself. After all, this is the reason she kept going. The gathering together, the warmth and laughter, Carol's creative, ad hoc cooking, the plates balanced on laps and armrests, the abundance of it all.

Family. Home.

Beth feels his eyes on her as they eat. Daryl, sitting by himself, next to the window, his body held perpendicular to the loose circle of people. He glances out the window regularly, vigilant as ever. Part of them, and yet not. Every time she looks over at him, he's staring down at his plate, eating methodically, silent. Like when they first ran from the prison together, when he would barely even acknowledge she was there.

It hurts. And yet she's not sure how else she expects him to be, if not this. Watchful. Careful. Protective, even in this place that appears so safe.

As everyone gradually finishes their meal, an expectant silence falls over the whole group, and everyone's eyes turn to Beth. They want her to tell it, now. Her story.

Beth looks down at her lap, unsure of herself, and Maggie touches her arm.

"You don't have to," she says softly. "If it's too hard. It's enough that you're here."

"It's okay," Beth replies, shaking her head. She means it. "I want to."

Beth tells her story. She tells them about waking up at Grady the first time, and the second. The intensity of a dozen sets of eyes on her is too much, at times, and she has to glance away, up at the ceiling or down at her hands. She catches Daryl's eye and now he's watching her, like the others, but different somehow. He's riveted to her, biting absently at one thumbnail as he listens.

No one says a word as she speaks. Not a single question or remark until she finishes with the house, the can of pineapple, with Aaron and Daryl.

(She doesn't mention the trunk, or the stillhouse, or the piggyback, or the funeral home, or the stray dog, or the number of times she's cried herself to sleep, or the nightmares she's had of Daryl dead and turned, or the way she collided with him, or the way he cradled the back of her skull and whispered her name.)

"That," declares one of the new men, the one called Eugene, "is the most incredible tale of survival and perseverance in the face of hardship that I believe I have ever had the pleasure of hearing."

The general reaction to that from everyone is one of barely restrained eyerolls, and Beth is saved from having to answer by a shrill cry from the other room, where Rick had laid Judith down while they all ate. Carl jumps to his feet and darts down the hall, returning a moment later with a teary-eyed and cranky looking Judith squirming in his arms.

"There's someone who really wants to see you before she goes home to bed," Carl says, glancing down at his baby sister with a look of such warmth and love that Beth feels her composure start to waver.

No one says a word, and Carl brings her over, passing the little girl into Beth's arms, which reach out automatically, by rote, without her even thinking to do it.

"Hey, Judy," Beth says, settling Judith onto her lap.

Judith tilts her face up at Beth, her expression serious and her brown eyes wide and curious, and she grabs onto Beth's shirt, pulling at it. She scrunches her face and grins up at Beth, all tiny baby teeth and pink gums.

Beth grins back at her, and holds the little girl close, kissing the soft brown hair on the side of her head, tears threatening her for what feels like the hundredth time that day. Her eyes ache from it. She hugs Judith closer, closing her eyes against the sting.

There's a gruff exhalation from across the room, a brusque movement, and Beth's eyes open to see Daryl slip down the hallway, out the front door. No one notices; they're all cooing and exclaiming over her and Judith.

Beth waits a moment or two for the room's lingering attention to dwindle as conversation strikes up again and Maggie offers to help Carol with the dishes. Everyone is up, then, chattering and helping to tidy, and Beth hands Judith to Rick.

"Good to have you back," he says, settling Judith high on one hip. He fixes Beth with a look, his eyes drifting to the wound in her forehead. "More'n good. It's everything, having you back here."

Beth nods, but doesn't know what to say. _Good to be back!_ seems stupid. True enough, but trite, and abruptly the expression on Rick's face troubles her. There's an emptiness there she doesn't remember seeing before, not even when he was at his worst, right after Judith was born. Sadness swells inside her and she knows that the man who stands before her isn't the same man who once lovingly tilled the prison yard's soil by her dad's side, who once tried so hard to make a home for all of them.

That man's as dead as the girl who dreamed of summer picnics in the shade of a crumbling prison.

Beth turns and glances over her shoulder, then, in the direction Daryl departed. She wants to be outside.

"He was different, after you were taken," Rick says, low enough to keep the others from overhearing. Beth turns to look at him, sees the understanding there as he nods toward the front door. She wasn't the only one who noticed Daryl leave. "Never did say much about any of it, but we could tell that something… He's changed."

"We've all changed," Beth replies. Their eyes meet and Rick gives a nod of acknowledgement, and for a moment he's exactly the man she knew before. Beth wonders whether it's possible for a person to become _too_ changed.

"Your father," Rick says, tilting his head. "I never got the chance - I'm sorry, Beth. I'm sorry I couldn't -"

"Don't," Beth says, shaking her head. "It wasn't your fault. He understood. _I_ understand."

Rick exhales roughly and looks away from her, out over the room, at the ragtag group he's somehow managed to keep together. He looks back at her, and nods, accepting her words.

Carl calls him away, then, and Beth slips out of the room. She walks down the dim hallway and out onto the porch, lets the screen door slap shut behind her. Daryl's leaning against the porch rail in the blue moonlight, smoking.

At his feet are two crushed cigarette butts.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," he replies, his voice almost inaudibly low.

Beth goes to stand next to him, but he turns himself away from her and faces the street, sighing a long exhalation of smoke into the cool night. The streets of Alexandria are dark but for a few porchlights, and the only sounds are a cricket rasping in a nearby hedge, and the muffled hum of conversation from inside the house.

Beth stands at his side, rests her hands on the wooden railing in front of her. It's a buttery cream colour, recently painted. It's jarring to see something new, something beautiful. Something that's been cared for. This whole place is so removed from the outside that it scares her a little. It's everything a person could want, now, and yet she's not sure if she likes it here, if she feels safe.

She wonders how far it is to the armoury, where they put her guns.

"I wanted to take you with us," Daryl says, then, gruff and abrupt. He takes a long drag on his cigarette. He's not looking at her, staring out into the dark street instead. Beth watches his profile. "Maggie too. Neither of us wanted to leave you there. We wanted to take you out of the city, find a place for you. Somewhere green, somewhere…" His words trail off and he's silent for several beats. "Hated it, leavin' you in that car in that fuckin' place."

Beth looks away from him, out into the yard, her fingernails digging into the painted wood. Her first instinct is to offer him some comfort, to tell him they did all right by her, that it's all okay now. But she can't. She doesn't know how to make this right for him; it's been so hard trying to make it right for _herself_.

Trying to understand how they could have left her behind.

Trying to understand how she's already forgiven them.

"If you'd buried me, I would have died," Beth points out. Daryl grunts and shakes his head, but doesn't reply. "Daryl, it's not -"

"I'm sorry," he rasps, still shaking his head. The expression of anguish on his face sucks the air from her lungs. "I'm so sorry, Beth. If I'da known, if we'da known, we never woulda - we thought - Jesus Christ, I'm so fucking sorry."

"It's okay," she says, automatically responding to the distress in his voice. "It's okay."

" _No_ ," he says harshly. His expression is thunderous. "It ain't _okay_. Can't believe we was so fuckin' stupid, leavin' you in that car when you was still alive. We didn't check. We thought - we thought for sure - you coulda _died_ , and we never woulda even known, I never woulda – _goddamn it_."

But it _is_ okay, Beth realizes, even as she holds herself back from saying it again. It is. She understands. If their positions had been reversed, she can't say she wouldn't have done the same as they did. And he's so sorry. He's so painfully sorry that it hurts her to hear it, to understand that he's carried guilt like a millstone for months. To know he only did what made sense, that he'd have done differently if he'd known.

That he would undo all of it if he could. All of it, right back to the moment he tried to offer a bit of their food to a wary stray dog, just because Beth wanted it.

Beth puts her hand on his where it rests on the railing, feels the rough, scabbed knuckles under her fingertips. Daryl inhales and glances at her. His face is half in darkness, but she can see the anxiety there, like he's waiting for her to blow up at him, to be angry. Like he expects it, believes he deserves it.

Beth's angry, sure. She's angry at a million things that have fucked up her life, obliterated her future, made her an orphan, flung her hard and fast into adulthood. She's not sure she'll ever stop being angry. But none of that anger is directed at this man who protected her with everything he had. This man who searched for her, who found her, who avenged her. Who mourned her.

She stares at his profile, at the devastation these months have made of him, at his shaking hand bringing his cigarette to his lips, and it's as though she can feel every aching moment of the grief he has suffered. It staggers her to think she could mean that much to anyone.

"What's this?" she asks softly, running her fingertip across a fresh, puckered scar on the back of his hand where it rests on the railing. She glances up to see him staring down at it too, his expression drawn. Not looking at her, he gives his head a shake, chews at his lip, and Beth knows. She knows, somehow, that there's no word for what that scar is. She knows all too well about that kind of scar.

Beth laces their fingers together and bends her head, pressing a kiss to the scarred flesh.

Daryl shudders beside her, and then he's crying, his face crumpling as he folds in on himself, tries to make himself small, tries to tuck his chin into his chest so she can't see his face.

" _Oh_ ," she breathes, and she's crying too, and she shifts, pulling him to her, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as he wraps both of his around her waist, bending under the pain, bowing his face to her shoulder. She rests her cheek against his head and holds him close.

They stay that way until their tears dry up, until the pain ebbs. They stay there, holding each other, until the world has narrowed to the sound of their breathing. Until Beth realises that she has it back, finally. The thing that was missing. The thing that kept her going. The feeling.

 _Home_.

"Fuck," Daryl mutters, pulling away from her. "Second time I cried all over you like a damn fool." He's blushing darkly, his nose red and eyes puffy from crying. He's a wreck, and Beth smiles at him.

"You can cry all over me any time you want, Daryl Dixon. It'll be our secret," she says.

Daryl scoffs, kind of, and glances back at the house. Soft laughter carries through the door, and Beth thinks again of the summer at the prison, of the good things that seemed possible then, tremulous and easily thwarted, but still possible.

 _birthdays and holidays and summer picnics_

It fills her with hope, and with fear. It's possible that they can still have all that. It's possible that it can all be taken away.

Her head throbs and she feels incredibly tired, exhausted right down to the marrow in her bones.

"I'm gonna go," Daryl says, then, sticking his hands deep in his pockets. He looks at her a moment, chewing his bottom lip. "You gonna be all right here?"

"Yeah," Beth nods. She gives him a smile that must look as wobbly as it feels, given the doubtful expression on Daryl's face. "I mean, relatively speaking."

Daryl simply nods, and turns to go, and he's halfway down the steps before Beth stops him.

"Goodnight, Daryl," she says. He pauses, and looks back up at her from the bottom step.

It's jarring, how his expression can slide from guarded to something so tender, so open. An exposed nerve.

"'Night, Beth," he replies, tipping his chin in a brief nod.

She watches him disappear into the night. She doesn't know where he goes.

She hates that.

* * *

Inside, the evening is wrapping up, and one look at Beth's face has Maggie politely but firmly booting everyone out. Tara and Rosita don't linger, blowing out all the candles in the living room before disappearing up to their bedrooms as Carol leaves, clean casserole dishes in her arms.

The three of them stand in the hallway, awkward now that the noise and energy of their family has left the house. Glenn gives Beth another brotherly squeeze and kisses Maggie before heading for the stairs. Halfway up, he pauses and looks down at them.

"Your dad'd be so happy to see you two like this," he says, a sad smile passing over his face. "Night, girls." He climbs the last few steps, and disappears upstairs.

Beth looks over at her sister, standing only a few feet from her. Maggie is watching her, arms wrapped around herself, swimming in her oversized brown sweater. Her eyes are wide, and there are shadows beneath them and hollows in her cheeks that weren't there the last time Beth saw her. When they crouched next to the school bus, rifles in their hands while their world was obliterated yet again. When Maggie, fierce and frantic, ran off to find Glenn, and left Beth on her own.

Maggie stares, and swallows a few times, and when she rubs her hands against her upper arms, she trembles. She's still in shock.

"Come on," Maggie says finally, gesturing at the stairs. She leans down and blows out the last candle, plunging the hallway into blue moonlit shadows.

They walk up the polished hardwood stairs, finding their way in spite of the dark. Beth follows her sister to the door of her new bedroom.

"Bathroom's just right there, if you need it," Maggie says softly, pointing down the hallway.

"I know," Beth reassures her, "I showered earlier, remember?"

"Yeah, but new places and all that, and you never did like the dark when you were little, so…" Maggie rambles, her tone oddly defensive. She trails off, looking up at the ceiling, down at the floor, anywhere but at Beth. She falls silent again, and Beth lets it be, doesn't try to fill the empty air with something cheerful. Maggie clears her throat, and frowns. "Beth, I want you to know that I -"

Beth's throat is tight and her head throbs, and all at once she knows she can't do this right now, not tonight. She's worn thin, and she just _can't_. It'll have to wait. It _can_ wait. They have time.

"Not tonight, Maggie," Beth says, taking a step forward and touching her sister's forearm. Maggie looks up at her, eyes wide and shining. "Just - not tonight, okay?"

Maggie nods jerkily, looks away. "Of course, I mean, you must be exhausted, don't know what I'm thinkin', keepin' you up any later than necessary, you oughta rest." She rambles to a stop, biting her lip.

"Goodnight, Maggie," Beth says, her hand on the brushed nickel doorknob of her new bedroom.

"'Night, Beth," Maggie replies, her voice hoarse. She pulls Beth into a quick, hard hug, then turns away and disappears into the bedroom she shares with Glenn. The door closes with a soft click.

The door is not thick enough to silence the sound of Maggie crying, of Glenn's soft, muffled words of comfort.

Beth enters the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She leans back against the door, takes in the bedroom that now belongs to her. It was a child's room before, judging by the bright blue paint and the wallpaper border of baseball bats and catchers' mitts. A small dresser and storage cube full of wicker baskets sit under the window, toys and picture books still stored there. She looks away.

Her backpack leans against the white nightstand. Beth leans down and opens it, reaching inside. She gropes until she feels the plastic flowerpot. She places it on the nightstand, angled so its solar panel will absorb the morning sun.

Beth sits heavily on the bed, her feet stuck straight out in front of her. She sits for a moment, her mind curiously blank as she stares at the boots on her feet. Boots that have taken her from her childhood home to a prison full of walkers, to the woods and the open road, into Atlanta and out of it, through four states, and now here. Home.

She can take them off, she knows. It'd be all right if she took them off, now.

Beth sucks in a breath, purses her lips. She stares at the scuffed, weathered toes. It felt so good to take them off earlier to shower, but it felt just as good to get them back on after. To feel ready.

Beth glances down at the single bed, at the dark blue comforter spread across it. One night won't mess it up too badly, she figures, and swings her dirty feet up onto the bed, on top of the comforter. She yanks it up at the sides and rolls around in it, cocooning the comforter around her. She lays back against the pillow with a sigh.

There are glow-in-the-dark stars stuck all over the ceiling, arranged in lopsided constellations. They glow faintly, not having absorbed enough light during the day to shine brightly in the dark. Beth wonders how the real stars look tonight, if they are bright, if a new constellation has moved into the scope of sky. She can't help but wish that she was lying outside, the hard ground below and the wide sky above, and no walls standing between her and the woods. Nothing to get in her way should she need to run.

Beth closes her eyes and pulls the comforter tighter around her.

She sleeps like the dead.

* * *

In the morning there's instant coffee and scrambled eggs and toast, but no butter or cream. They don't have cows yet, Maggie explains apologetically, just chickens. Beth shrugs and eats her eggs, doesn't bother reminding Maggie that anything beats expired cans of water chestnuts and charred squirrel meat.

They all eat together, Tara and Rosita chatting happily and goading each other about some kind of bet they have going. Maggie dodges around them, getting more coffee for Beth, while Glenn feigns aggravation at living in a house full of bossy girls, his eyes bright.

Beth sits on her stool at the bar and smiles, sipping her watered-down black coffee and marveling at the _normalness_ of it all.

Tara and Rosita leave for gate duty, and Glenn drops a kiss on Maggie's cheek as he departs for some meeting about weaknesses in a section of the wall, and the two sisters are left staring at each other across the crumb-scattered breakfast bar, their hands wrapped around rapidly cooling mugs of coffee.

They sit in silence for several minutes. Beth listens to the sounds that filter through the windows - voices raised in greeting, children laughing, birds chirping in the trees.

"There are things I need to explain," Maggie says eventually, looking down at the table. Beth stares at the crown of Maggie's head. Her whole body is tense, her mouth a grim line when she lifts her face to look Beth in the eye. "There are things you need to know."

"I know, Maggie," Beth says, shaking her head. "They told me everything at the hospital. And they didn't lie."

"I mean before that," Maggie says. She takes a deep breath. "After the prison, I was… I got out with Sasha and Bob, and we found the school bus in the road, and it was too late. I knew you must have been in there, and it was… It was horrible. I couldn't think about it. Until we met up with Daryl and them, I thought you were dead."

Beth nods. It makes sense. It's a very reasonable, Maggie way to look at the facts. Beth doesn't say aloud what she thinks: _I never once assumed you were dead._

"Daryl told me you made it out together, that you were still out there somewhere, but… I'm not like you," Maggie says, giving her head a sad shake. "I can't let myself hope. Not like you can. Not after everything. I decided you must be dead." Maggie stares down at the countertop.

"Daryl told me all of it, where you two were for all those weeks," she continues. "You were never that far from me and Sasha and Bob. You know that? We were all circling around each other."

Maggie sniffles loudly, wiping her nose against her wrist. She looks up, then, her expression pained and regretful.

"I'm sorry I didn't look out for you. Some big sister I am. I promised Dad, but I didn't, and I -"

Beth shakes her head, reaches across the counter to place her hand over Maggie's.

"Maggie, I ain't mad at you," she says softly. "You did what you had to do. So did I. We both made it, and now we get a second chance. That's all there is to it."

Maggie's expression cracks and she's crying again, and Beth realises that she's crying, too. Maggie stands up and comes to her, wrapping her in a hug and sniffling into her shoulder.

"When the hell did you go and get all grown up on me?" Maggie says.

Beth almost says "when you weren't looking" but she holds back. Just. Instead, she pokes Maggie in the ribs. "I've actually always been the mature one."

"I missed you, brat," Maggie mumbles into her shoulder. Beth laughs breathlessly.

"Missed you too, jerkface."

Maggie laughs, and the sound of it makes Beth bubble over with happiness, and she finds it easy to extend forgiveness in this moment. If there's even anything to forgive, and Beth isn't sure there is. They've all had to make terrible choices from meagre options, without knowing all of the story. They've all had to make do, had to live with every unintended consequence. They have to live with all of it.

"Deanna wants to see you today," Maggie says, then, taking a step back and wiping at her damp face with the backs of her hands. "She meets with everyone, it's nothing to worry about. It's how they - how _we_ do things."

"What does she want to meet about?" Beth asks.

Maggie explains, telling her Deanna's mostly in charge, about the transparency and accountability she strives to maintain in Alexandria, about how they're trying to ensure that no one dangerous is admitted to the community.

Beth nods, takes it in. It all sounds reasonable. She wonders, though, what kinds of questions she will be asked, and what kinds of answers she should give.

Wonders what she'll say if she's asked if she has ever killed the living.

* * *

The interview is bizarre.

It's an interaction plucked from the past, from the old world. It's odd to sit in a room with a stranger and talk about her feelings, about everything that's happened to her. It's odd to sip a cup of peppermint tea made by her sister. It's odd to sit in a chair in clean clothes and listen to the indistinct music of people talking on the sidewalk outside.

Beth wonders if this is what college interviews would have been like.

Deanna asks where she's from, where she grew up, how she survived the initial outbreak and the months of chaos that followed. Beth tells her everything without hesitation, supposing she must have learned it all from Maggie already, anyway. She holds nothing back, tells her about Mama and Shawn, and how Otis and Jimmy wrangled them into the barn with their neighbours and friends. Tells her about the day Shane broke the barn open and she lost her faith in her dad, in the future. She tells her about the broken mirror, about the scar on her wrist. She tells her about the herd and the barn going up in flames, about Jimmy, about that first winter on the run. She tells her about the prison and the Governor, about Judith and how they almost had a real home.

When Beth tells her that she fled into the woods with Daryl, Deanna's interest is piqued.

"Tell me more about that," Deanna says, leaning forward and knitting her fingers together. She nods encouragingly. "Mr. Dixon was not the most forthcoming individual I've ever interviewed, and I'm very interested to hear more about what you two went through."

Beth stares at her a moment, then glances down at her hands in her lap. Abruptly she feels more guarded. The rest of her story is comprised of events Deanna has likely pieced together through Maggie or Glenn or any of the others. But the weeks she spent with Daryl are different. They're hers, and his, and if he didn't want to tell Deanna, neither does she.

"Daryl saved my life," Beth says carefully, lifting her gaze to meet Deanna's measuring one. She pauses, thinks of that hot afternoon in the fetid stillhouse, drinking moonshine, whipping their pain at each other like darts at a dartboard. How that was the moment everything between them shifted. Beth doesn't think she can find the words to explain what it all was, what it all meant. She doesn't think she can find a way to make anyone understand, and she hates to think of all the ways it could be misconstrued.

"We saved each other," she says. "That's all I want to say about it."

Deanna raises her eyebrows, nods, and makes a note on the yellow pad of paper on her lap. A clock on one of the bookshelves ticks the seconds, the sound loud in the silent room.

"I understand you were kidnapped," Deanna says, looking up again. "Is that right?"

Beth nods. Her tension easing somewhat, she describes waking up at Grady, explains to Deanna what the place was. She describes the work she did, her duties, the system of indentured servitude that kept her from leaving. She says more about the place itself than about the events that happened there, and when she pauses to take a sip of her tea, Deanna speaks.

"Have you ever killed anyone, Beth?"

Beth places the cup back in its saucer and lifts her gaze to meet Deanna's. The woman is observing her closely. Beth thinks about the kind of place this is, about who she needs to be. She blinks, shakes her head.

"Gosh, no," she replies, eyes wide. "Walkers, sure, but not people."

Deanna just looks at her for a moment. Then she smiles, tells Beth that's plenty for one afternoon. She shakes her hand and welcomes her to Alexandria, says she'll be in touch about a job.

When Beth walks out the door, back out into the sunny afternoon, Daryl is leaning against the fence at the base of Deanna's front steps, smoking a cigarette. He looks up.

"Maggie was waitin' on you, but some kinda fuss came up in inventory, I dunno," he says, shrugging. He doesn't offer an explanation for why he decided to replace her. "How'd it go?"

Beth shrugs, descending the stairs to stand beside him. She looks out over the mostly empty street, squints at the bright sunlight. "It was weird."

"Hm," he replies, noncommittal, eyeing her speculatively.

"It's hard to talk about some of it," she continues. She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, frowning. She wants to tell Daryl about the things that weigh on her. Gorman and O'Donnell and the man she killed with the wrong drugs. Joan and the other girls. But something holds her back, some fear that if she did tell him everything, that the gentle look in his eyes might disappear. That she might disappoint him.

Daryl flicks his cigarette away to land in the gutter, where it smoulders. He exhales the last of the smoke in a short huff. He resembles a cranky dragon as he looks at her, _examines_ her, really, his eyes wandering her face, her hairline, the scars she's accumulated in the months since they were separated.

"I got a hundred things I wish I'd never done, startin' with tryin' to get that damn mutt into the house for you," he says gruffly.

Beth smiles, remembering the day they spent in the funeral home, devising ways to convince the dog to come inside, dipping their spoons into jars of peanut butter and grape jelly, talking about a dozen inconsequential things she can't even remember now.

It's the last truly good day she had.

"Yeah, the whole time I was stuck in that hospital, all I kept thinkin' was, 'damn that Daryl Dixon, if only he hadn't tried to get me that dog,'" she says, raising an eyebrow at him. He squints at her, uncertain. "I'm kiddin'," she clarifies.

"Ain't funny," he grumbles, jamming his hands in his pockets and looking away from her.

"Sorry," she says, reaching out and nudging his boot with the toe of hers. He grunts at her. "What are you up to today?"

"Nothin'," Daryl replies. "Why?"

"You wanna give me the grand tour? No one's offered yet," Beth says, smiling.

Daryl scoffs. "Ain't much to see." But he stands up straight and cups her elbow, nudges her to follow him.

 _Just like old times_ , she thinks.

Beth falls into step beside him and they walk down the quiet street. He keeps his hands shoved in his pockets, and the grand tour consists mostly of him saying people's names and pointing with his chin at different houses.

He points out the armoury, the clinic, the inventory where food stocks are held. He points out a house that's been converted to a school and a daycare, and the garden plots where crops of vegetables are being grown to feed the growing community. As they pass the fence, Beth sees white and brown chickens picking their way between tall corn stalks, scratching for bugs in the dirt.

"That's Aaron and Eric's place," he says, gesturing at a bungalow. They pause on the sidewalk. "They're good people. You'll like 'em."

There's a rustling sound in the tree beside them, and a squirrel scampers down the trunk and darts across the sidewalk. Beth feels Daryl tense beside her for a moment, then he exhales roughly and relaxes.

"I'd get it, but they don't like that much, 'round here," he says, and it's easy to see how stupid he finds that policy.

"You still go out huntin'?" she asks.

"Mm-hm," he nods, peering up at the tree as if to see if any more squirrels are hiding up there.

"Next time you go, you want company?"

Daryl's head swivels around to look at her. He frowns. "You wanna go huntin' with me?"

"Of course," Beth replies, smiling at him. "We only got partway through you teachin' me everythin' you know before we got interrupted."

"Pfft," Daryl says, half rolling his eyes and looking away from her. Beth sees colour creep up the sides of his neck, toward his cheeks and ears, and she grins at him. "Take ages to teach you all that, girl." He looks at her for another moment, chews his bottom lip. "You free tomorrow?"

"I'm free tomorrow," she replies, still grinning.

"Well," he says, shuffling his feet uncomfortably. He nods, glances at her for a moment, glances away. "All right then."

Then Daryl leaves her standing on the sidewalk in front of Aaron's house, grinning at his back as he walks away.

* * *

They leave at daybreak on Daryl's bike.

Maggie only puts up a slight fuss about Beth going outside the walls. It's the hunting itself that confuses her. After all, Beth used to cry every fall when Otis would bring home deer and turkeys and hang them up in the shed to drain the blood, and she never even held a gun until after the turn.

Beth firmly tells her sister that she's going, and promises to be careful, promises that they'll be back before the party being thrown tonight to welcome Beth. They hug before Beth departs, rifle slung over her shoulder.

There are things that have changed, Beth knows, that Maggie struggles to accept. She doesn't understand yet that the kid sister whose hair she used to braid is long gone. She doesn't understand yet, but she will. She has to.

The terrain around Alexandria is hilly and thickly wooded. They leave the bike up by the highway, hidden from view beneath a pile of brush. They walk in silence for most of the morning, both of them absorbed in tracking rabbit trails through the underbrush.

When they come upon a little spring bubbling up out of the rocks, Daryl touches her arm and they stop. Beth cups her hands and uses them as a dipper to drink from the spring. The water is so cold it hurts her teeth, and it tastes faintly of iron.

Daryl sits on a log by the spring and sets his crossbow down. He reaches into his jacket and produces two small packages wrapped in brown paper. He hands one to her and Beth realises it's a sandwich.

"Carol made 'em, don't worry," he says.

Smiling, Beth takes the sandwich and sits down beside him. She unwraps it, and the scent of peanut butter and grape jelly reaches her nose. She laughs, delighted.

"What's funny?" Daryl asks around a mouthful of sandwich, looking at her out the corner of his eye.

"Nothing," Beth replies. "Just - peanut butter and grape jelly remind me of you."

Daryl stops chewing and freezes for a moment, like he's caught off guard. He stares straight ahead for several beats, then swallows.

"Me too," he says.

Beth looks at him, at his profile, at the way his jaw and his Adam's apple work as he demolishes the sandwich. Now she's the one caught off guard.

They finish their sandwiches and brush the crumbs from their hands. Beth stares into the hushed woods, watching a sparrow flit from branch to branch. For a moment they could be on the run together again, before the funeral home.

Daryl makes a gruff little sound, like clearing his throat but not quite.

"Don't think you know what you done for me," he says.

Beth turns her head and looks at him. He doesn't meet her gaze; he's looking rather pointedly anywhere but her. Beth thinks maybe she _does_ know, but she also wants to hear him say it, his way.

"What did I do for you?" she asks.

He squints at her, hesitating. He's quiet for a long moment, and Beth lets him be, lets him collect his thoughts and sort through them before speaking. She knows he will.

"I was lost, after they took you," he says, glowering out at the still woods. Beth watches the fingers of his right hand tap restlessly against his leg. He wants a cigarette. "Fell in with some bad people. Real bad. I didn't know it, 'til I did. That's how I met up with Rick, Carl, Michonne. Then we found the others. Like they was sayin' last night."

"I'm glad you weren't alone for long," Beth says.

Daryl gives her a sideways glance. "Wasn't alone. Had you with me."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Can't explain it right," he replies, shaking his head and looking down at his hands in his lap. "Just felt like… I dunno. Like you was with me. Tellin' me what's what. I dunno."

"You were with me too," Beth says, tilting her head to try to catch his eye. He avoids it. "You _were_."

"Why'd you stab that cop?" he asks, then, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. His face is flushed, his expression anxious. It's obvious that it's been bothering him, that it's something he's tried and failed to understand.

Beth can identify with that feeling.

"I'm not sure," she replies, after a moment. She looks down at her lap, picks at a thread coming loose on her fraying jeans. "I don't remember that day. I mean, I think I kinda do, maybe, but I'm not sure if what I'm picturing is just 'cause of what people have told me, you know?"

Daryl nods, his gaze heavy on hers.

"Dawn was… It's strange," Beth continues. "There were times when I almost wanted to like her. Times when I definitely felt sorry for her. But she was… She was wrong. She was trying to do the right thing. But she was still _wrong_. She did things to me - _made_ me do things. And I think she wanted me to be like her. Like that would mean that she was right, that she had done the right thing, if I became like her." Beth pauses for a long moment, then sighs. "She wanted to prove a point to me. That the way I was wasn't enough. That I had to be more like her. That she was _right_ to do things the way she did."

Beth looks out at the trees, at the leaves spinning on their stems in the soft breeze. She listens to the sound of the water bubbling up out of the earth, of the birds singing, of Daryl's breathing beside her. She feels the sudden urge to lower her head and rest it on his shoulder.

Grady feels like it's a hundred years behind her now, she realises. She got away. She's free.

She remembers how it felt, the glass shattering in her hand when she bashed the bottle into Gorman's head. How O'Donnell's eyes locked with hers in pure panic for an instant before he tumbled backwards and disappeared down the elevator shaft.

Beth shudders. No, she's not free at all.

"You don't gotta tell me what happened," Daryl says then, his voice soft and rough. "You can, if you want, but you don't gotta. You don't gotta explain a damn thing to me, or anybody."

"I lied to Deanna," she says. Daryl just watches her. Her throat feels tight. "I killed people." Beth blinks hard to keep the tears stinging her eyes from falling. "I don't… I don't know if I did the right thing. I never knew the whole story. It was all so… I don't know if I'm a good person, anymore."

Daryl sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out, and then his hand covers hers, wraps her fingers up in his.

"You're a good person, Beth," he says. "Whatever happened, whatever it was, you did what you had to do. And I know you wouldn't ever hurt nobody 'less you didn't have no choice."

Beth closes her eyes, tries to ease the tension pulling painfully around her eyes.

"What if they don't let me stay?" she whispers.

"Pfft," Daryl replies. "You? You're exactly the kinda person we need here. You ain't goin' nowhere. Don't worry about that."

"But Maggie said they're trying to screen -"

"You gotta put it away," he says. Beth opens her eyes and he's looking right at her, and the expression on his face stops her breath in her chest. He's calm and kind and _knowing_ , and the faith he has in her goodness comforts her like a warm blanket being drawn around her.

Beth lets her head fall to rest on his shoulder. Daryl exhales noisily. He lifts his hand and it hovers in mid-air for one long, hesitant moment before he lets it drop back to his lap. Beth reaches for it, laces her fingers with his.

They stay like that for a long time.

* * *

The party is wonderful.

Beth has always loved parties, ever since she was a little girl. She used to get so over-excited for birthday parties - whose, it never seemed to matter - that she was notorious in her family for throwing up right before the guests arrived.

Carol's house is full of people. The whole group is there, and Deanna and her son, Aaron and Eric, and numerous other faces that have become familiar in the short time she's been in Alexandria. Introductions are made and Beth does her best to remember every name she's told.

The sound of laughter and conversation seems to take on a physical presence, filling the room with heat and air and life. Beth can't remember the last time she experienced that feeling. Before the turn, she's sure, before silence and caution became required of a person at every moment.

Beth stands by Maggie, mostly, and she's only half-listening to her and Deanna discuss something about the school and the daycare, when Beth feels warm fingers touch her elbow.

"Hey." Beth turns around, almost spilling her punch on Daryl's chest.

Beth stares at him for a moment, and she almost laughs. For some reason, when they'd talked about the party when Daryl dropped her off at home earlier and he'd promised to come, she pictured him showering and shaving and putting on a nice shirt like everyone else. Now she wants to laugh at herself for ever thinking that.

Daryl stands there in his vest and his dark, long-sleeved shirt, ragged jeans and boots. It all looks relatively clean, and the crossbow is absent, and it's possible he made an attempt to comb his hair, but aside from that, he's just Daryl. Same as always.

Maybe some things really don't change. And if that's true, Beth's glad that Daryl's total indifference to being presentable is one of them. She grins at him.

"You look real nice," he says abruptly, the words seeming to fall out of him almost by accident.

"Oh," she replies, hand rising automatically to shield her forehead, to touch the wavy scruff of her short hair. It's grown back quickly, and should be long enough to pull back into a short ponytail in another month or so. But truthfully, she's avoided mirrors since arriving in Alexandria. "It's - I mean, they had to shave it all off, and it's growing back kinda crazy, I don't know -"

"S'cute," he says. He just looks at her for a moment and then shrugs. "You could be balder 'n Mr. Clean and you'd still be beautiful."

Beth huffs a surprised laugh. _Beautiful_? "I don't know about that, but thanks."

"Modesty don't suit you," Daryl says, something like a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Beth gapes at him, tries to form a reply, but Maggie interrupts, steers her back towards the conversation with Deanna. Giving Daryl a helpless look over her shoulder, she smiles when he nods and tips his head in Aaron's direction, across the room. He disappears behind a small circle of people watching Abraham arm wrestle a grinning Carl.

"I'm sure we can arrange that," Deanna is saying, as Beth attempts to wheel her attention back to the conversation happening in front of her. "The library is well stocked, and we can put together some kind of committee to sort out a curriculum."

Beth figures her face must broadcast her confusion, for Maggie pipes up. "I was telling Deanna that you're really good with little kids, and you'd be a great fit in the school." Maggie nods, eyebrows raised, probably trying to look encouraging.

"Um," Beth replies, frowning and giving her head a shake. "I'm not really sure what I want to do just yet."

"Of course," Deanna says, holding up a placating hand. "You need time to settle in. But why don't we meet early next week, discuss some options?"

Beth nods, and smiles, and can't seem to make a word come out. Maggie smiles, and Deanna smiles, and Carol comes by with a tray of pigs in a blanket.

All at once the room feels too crowded, too close. The press of bodies and the noise of strangers' laughter grates where it once delighted. Beth wants to get away from everyone, to breathe fresh air, to be alone.

Excusing herself, she hurries out onto the front porch, tries to catch her breath. Her throat feels dry and her head has started to tighten ominously, a throbbing pulse that starts at the top of her head where her scar hides beneath her hair, and spiderwebs out across her entire skull.

Beth leans her forehead against the painted wood column of the porch, and counts to ten, breathing slowly in and out.

She gets as far as "seven" before she bends over the porch railing and vomits into the hedge. Pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, she stumbles down the front steps and heads back to Maggie and Glenn's.

The walk is quick enough but still agonizing, the muscles around her eyes straining as she tries to keep them as closed as possible, tries to block out what little light there is in the dim street.

Beth finds her way into the house, collapsing onto the couch with a whimper.

Lying on her back, she covers her eyes with her arms and breathes slowly and deliberately, trying to ease the pain that presses against the inside of her skull.

She tries not to think of the bullet that left this pain behind. Tries not to think of the little pieces of bone they cleaned out of the wound. Tries not to think about the depression in her skull that will never mend.

She tries not to think about the vague, creeping sense of unease this place leaves her with.

A short time later, she hears the creak of the front door, and footsteps on the floorboards.

Something cold touches her forehead, and the sensation is so heavenly that she whimpers aloud. It doesn't drive the pain away, but for a brief moment the fiery band that wraps around her skull is dampened, like soft rain on a wildfire.

She opens her eyes a slit to see Daryl standing over her. He hasn't turned on any lights; the room is blessedly dark and she can just make out the shadow of him leaning over her.

"Migraine?" he asks, his voice low and soft.

Beth moves her head in what she hopes is the approximation of a nod.

"Hm," he gruffs. "Shoulda said somethin'. Hold on."

Daryl rearranges the cold cloth so that it covers her eyes, plunging her into cool darkness. Beth hears his footsteps go, but he isn't gone long. When he returns, he slides a hand under her shoulders and sits her up.

"Take these," he says, dropping a couple of chalky white pills into her palm.

"No," Beth replies. "We gotta save those, other people need 'em more."

"Nobody needs nothin' more than you," Daryl says, sounding annoyed.

Unable to find a way to reply to that, Beth swallows the pills. Daryl turns around and produces a glass of water. She drinks the whole thing.

"C'mon," he says, crouching down next to her. He scoops one arm under her bent knees and one behind her shoulders, and lifts her into his arms like she weighs nothing.

Beth briefly considers protesting, briefly thinks she probably should. But why? He wants to, and it feels so impossibly good, letting her heavy, aching head loll against his arm.

Daryl takes her upstairs, pausing to let her direct him to the right room. He places her gently on the bed, then steps back to pull her boots off, placing them beside the bed. She thinks of protesting that, too, for she still hasn't managed to sleep with them off. She looks down at her sock feet and thinks maybe it's time she managed.

"This happen a lot?" he asks, standing there by the bed with his hands dangling awkwardly at his sides.

"Yeah," Beth nods. "Since the… Well, you know." Daryl grunts in acknowledgement.

"You're tough," he says. "All right? Don't gotta prove it to nobody by sufferin' through this. We don't gotta live like that no more."

"I'm not trying to prove anything," Beth replies, arranging the cloth over her eyes again. "Just trying not to be a burden."

" _Burden_ ," Daryl repeats, his voice scornful. "Doubt you've ever been a burden a day in your life."

Beth holds the cloth tight to her eyes. She doesn't know what to say to that.

"Get some rest," he says, then, and she hears him turn to leave. Beth reaches her hand out and grabs for him, wrapping her fingers around his.

"Stay," Beth says.

Daryl exhales noisily. "Ain't why I came to check on you," he says.

"I know. But so what?"

"Yeah, well, Maggie'll have somethin' to say about it, she gets home and finds me here. In your _bedroom_." It's the way he says _bedroom_ that sets her off, like he's scandalized at the very idea of Beth even having a bedroom, never mind him being in it. Beth laughs. It sends needles of pain prickling all over her scalp, but she laughs.

"Hmph," Daryl grumbles. "You laughin' at me, girl?"

"Yes," Beth replies. She shifts her weight over to make room for him on the bed. For a long moment he doesn't move, doesn't respond. Then he huffs out a short breath and Beth feels the bed sink under his weight. He sits back against the headboard, her head at his hip.

They sit in silence for several minutes. Beth feels a measure of relief to the pain, and hopes that means the painkillers are kicking in. Daryl is tense beside her, his body drawn and taught.

Then, with no idea what prompts it, Beth remembers something important.

"Daryl," she whispers, "know what I saw when I was out there?"

"What?"

"I was checkin' out a house and I found one of those ashtrays shaped like a bikini top. Like the one we found, remember? In that old stillhouse?"

"I remember," Daryl says, huffing a strange little sound that Beth supposes is a laugh.

"I stayed for the night but in the morning I burned the whole place down," she continues. She feels him shift beside her, turning his head to look at her.

"No shit?" he asks, brows drawn together and a genuine smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"No shit," she replies, grinning. "Burned that sucker right to the ground."

"Hm," is all he says, and silence falls between them.

Beth listens to the sound of his breathing beside her, feels the warmth of him. She's fallen asleep this way dozens of times, with him keeping watch over them both.

"I missed this," she mumbles.

Daryl exhales a long, deep sigh. There's a pause, and then Beth feels the tentative touch of his hand landing gently on the crown of her head. She smiles.

"Me too," he says, his voice little more than a rusty whisper in the close darkness.

Beth falls asleep to the sound of Daryl's steady breathing, to the sensation of him running his fingers through her hair.

* * *

When Beth wakes, the pain is gone, and Daryl's still there.

The first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is his arm beside her, illuminated only by soft candlelight. It's still dark; it's not even morning yet. She blinks, cranes her head to look up at him, and finds he's sitting up, awake, leaning back against the headboard. He's looking down at something in his hands. It's her old knife, still tucked in its leather sheath.

He's silent and still, his palms upturned in his lap, cradling the knife, seemingly lost in thought.

Like falling asleep beside Daryl, waking up to him is nothing new. There's so much about him that's the same as it was then, when they were on the run together, the roughness of him, the short, gruff way of him.

Yet there's something else about him that's different, something deep and quiet and calm, something wise. Something beautiful.

"Quit starin' at me," he grumbles, his gaze sliding to meet hers.

"Hey," she replies softly, smiling at him. The corner of his mouth twitches, and she grins. "You know, I had them turn that hospital inside out lookin' for that knife."

"Here," he says immediately, apologetically, pushing it at her.

"Daryl," she says, rolling her eyes at him. She takes it, though, props herself up on one elbow and holds it in her hand, thinks about the times she wished she had it on the road. Thinks how lucky she is she didn't die from the lack of it.

 _I'm so fucking lucky._

"Where'd you get it?" she asks.

"Carol," he replies. "She thought I'd want it."

"Did you?" Beth looks up at him, searches his face. He's looking at his lap, but after a moment he slants a look her way.

"Yeah, I did."

Beth holds the knife between them. She's happy to have it back, she supposes, but she's struck by the urge to return it to him, as though it doesn't belong to her anymore. As though he needed it more than she did.

"Your sister came to check on you when she got home," Daryl says, then. "Stuck her head in to say g'night."

Beth eyes him. "Oh?"

"Stuck her head back out pretty quick, too," he continues, a rueful little smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Beth grins. "Good thing she's still walkin' on eggshells around me or else I'd probably be in for an earful."

Daryl nods, but he doesn't smile. "Go easy on her," he says. "Losin' you was… Just go easy on her."

Beth looks away from him, down at the knife lying on the comforter. She feels the sting of guilt, followed by a surge of frustration. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, that she's spent so much of the time since she got back tip-toeing around their grief. Like when she cut her wrist and she spent weeks making it up to Maggie and her dad, making sure they knew she was sorry, that it was selfish and wrong, that she was fine now, cheerful and happy and fine. Making sure they never worried, never feared the thoughts and feelings that crouched inside her. Never mind that she was the one so hopeless that she dug into the skin of her own wrist with a jagged shard of broken mirror.

Beth wonders if she could ever find the words to explain that to any of them.

Daryl clears his throat. "Every mornin' since you came back, I wake up thinkin' I musta lost my damn mind. I lie there tryin' to figure out if it's real or not," he gives a dry, humourless laugh. "Hard to shake it."

Beth just stares at him, at the scruff on his jaw. She has no idea what to say to him, how to talk about his grief. It makes her feel self-conscious and confused and sad, a sick feeling swirling in her stomach. He's been so hurt, and she doesn't know how to take it. Doesn't know what that means for them, now. Doesn't know how she's supposed to act, to feel. Most of all, she doesn't know how to comfort him, how to convince him she's real.

After all, none of the people she's lost have ever come back from the dead.

Beth shifts, inching closer to him, sliding under his arm and pressing close to his side, her cheek against his chest. Daryl's arm hovers in midair for a moment, and then he gently settles it around her, his hand on her side. Beth lets her left arm rest on his chest, her hand over his heart.

"I'm alive," she whispers to him. "I'm here."

Daryl exhales in a harsh gust, and his hand comes up to cup the back of her head.

"I need you to let it go, now," she says. She can feel his heart thumping fast and hard under her cheek. "I'm here. I'm back. It was horrible. I'll never know how horrible it was for you, and you'll never know how horrible it was for me. But you have to put it away."

For a moment, he just breathes, just lets her words hang in the still air between them.

"What if I can't?" he says, his voice low and gruff. Beth smiles against his chest.

"You have to," she replies. "Or it kills you. Here." She presses her hand against his chest, over his racing heart.

Daryl lays his hand over hers, cradles her fingers in his own.

"That's what you done for me," Daryl says softly. "That right there."

Beth blinks, feels wetness under her cheek. She's crying. She lifts her head and looks up at him. He's watching her, his eyes narrow and soft, and it's that same look he gave her that night at the funeral home, like he's standing on the edge of something, but he can't jump off on his own.

Beth leans up and presses a soft, brief kiss to the side of his mouth.

Daryl freezes, and Beth pulls back a few inches to look at him. He stares at her for a long, silent moment, his face flushed. He chews on his bottom lip and stares and stares, and Beth realises he doesn't know what to do. Slowly, trying to give him time and space to pull away if he wants to, Beth closes the distance between them again and kisses him again. He sighs, a rush of air on her skin, and Beth feels one hand slide gently up to hold her upper arm. They barely move, barely touch, just the gentle nudge of noses brushing against cheeks, of their lips tingling with the newness of each other.

Daryl pulls away.

"I should go 'fore everyone's up," he says. But it's not a brush off. Beth knows. He's not trying to get away from her. And she doesn't feel the need to insist that he stay. He says he needs to go, and she knows he'll be back. They have time now.

Beth smiles at him, and takes his hand, and leads him down the dark stairs and out onto the front porch. She flicks the porchlight on at the door and walks out with him. He stops and turns back to her.

"You all right?" he asks her, examining her face.

"Yeah," Beth replies, wrapping her arms around her chest, holding herself. "I'm okay. It's just… It's hard to get used to all this." She pauses, gestures at the quiet street, the dark houses. "It's… It looks safe. And a lot of the time it feels safe. But it doesn't feel like home. You know?"

"Anythin' happens, shit goes bad, we can't keep this place - we run. Simple as that. Done it before, we can do it again. You won't get left. Not again. Not _ever_." He looks right at her, steady and determined. Beth swallows the lump in her throat and nods, unable to speak.

There's an extended pause where Beth expects Daryl to mumble an attempted goodbye and leave, but he doesn't speak, doesn't move. Daryl looks down at his feet, and it kinda kills her that _this_ man is standing in front of her with all the confidence of a kid with his first crush. And maybe that's exactly what this is.

"Aaron and Eric have me over for dinner now and then," Daryl says, glancing up at her. "Headin' over there tomorrow night. You wanna come?"

"Like a date?" she asks, arching a playful eyebrow at him.

Daryl blushes darkly and scowls at her. "Yeah, like a date. Damn."

Beth laughs. "I'd love that."

"A'right," he nods, chewing at his bottom lip. He stands there looking at her for a long time, and she just looks right back at him. Waits to see what he'll do.

Daryl seems to make up his mind, then, for he takes a step forward, cups her neck in his hands, brushing the scar on her cheekbone with a calloused thumb.

"Best thing I ever saw, you runnin' towards me," he says. And then he leans down and kisses her.

That feeling comes over her again as she runs her hands up to his shoulders and he presses dry lips to hers, curving into a smile - the warm, safe, familiar feeling. _Home. Family._

They stand there under the porchlight, moths circling their heads, kissing like it's the most normal thing in the world.

Maybe now, after everything, in this place that feels like it could one day be home, it is.


End file.
